Save Yourself Some Pain

Have you ever been to Kirk Cameron’s website, Way of the Master? Well, it’s a pretty well made site. It has lots of cool flash animation and videos of Mr. Cameron telling us just how afraid of Hell we should be. The site’s high-priced flash features make it look really official and authoritative, but when you look closely at the content, you can tell that it’s just a silly attempt by Cameron and friends to make sense of a nonsensical pro-afterlife worldview.

Within the site, there is a booklet called “Save Yourself Some Pain.” I read this online booklet and almost immediately began shaking my head at just how poorly these people explain and understand their beliefs. Let’s take a look at this booklet.

Becoming a Christian is the most incredible event that will ever take place in your life. You have found peace with your Creator. You have found everlasting life!

The italics are theirs. Talk about a poorly worded beginning paragraph! They say that once you accept Christ you get an everlasting life, but according to Christianity, everyone already has everlasting life. That’s what an afterlife is, by definition. I think what they really mean is that you get an everlasting life in Heaven. Some may think that I’m nitpicking, but I disagree. What Cameron and friends are doing here, is miscommunicating and/or misunderstanding the single most important piece of their afterlife-belief: salvation.

What if I told Kirk that I didn’t want to exist as a consciousness after my death? Would I have to simply deny God to do that? Fine, consider it done! But that doesn’t leave much room for Hell, does it? Well what if Kirk said that denying God would merely get me into Hell? Fine again, but then his argument about finding everlasting life becomes nonsensical, for to go to Hell is also to have everlasting life. With such a fancy (and no doubt expensive) website, you think that they could be a bit more careful about how they word things like this.

God acquits us from the Courtroom of Eternal Justice on the grounds that Jesus Christ paid our fine. We are "justified" (made right with God) by His suffering death. The resurrection of Jesus Christ was God's seal of approval of the fact that His precious blood was sufficient to pay the fine.

Think of it this way... You have violated the law and face a $50,000 fine. You tell the judge that you are truly sorry for your crime, but he answers, "So you should be -- you have broken the law! Now, can you pay this fine?" He can only acquit you if the fine is paid. If someone else pays your fine, then he can let you go, but he must have "grounds" on which to release you.

Again, the italics are theirs. Now what we have here is a misapplied analogy. If any of you out there read Goosing The Antithesis, then you will already know that I love analogies. And I can see a really big hole in this analogy.

Cameron compares judgment by God to be the equivalent of paying a fine in a court of law. This is the first error in their analogy. According to Christian doctrine, at the end of your life, you are judged by God and treated accordingly. But in the analogy, this judgment would compare to a prison sentence, NOT a fine. A spiritual fine would be like saying a lot of prayers, or reading some Bible passages, or something like that. In a court of law, a fine is a lot different than imprisonment of your body; a fine is something where you give up resources (money) and are then free to go. But in Christianity, you can’t be judged at the end of your life and then be set free to go (to continue living in this life); your current life is over and all you got left is Heaven or Hell. Therefore, Heaven would be like being acquitted, and Hell would be a prison sentence.

This is why their analogy doesn’t work. In a court of law, you can have a relative or friend pay a fine, but you cannot have a friend or relative serve your prison sentence. So having Jesus sacrifice himself is not like having your fine paid for you, but it is like having your prison sentence served for you. And no sane individual will ever contend that justice is served by having an innocent person serve the prison sentence of a convicted criminal.

The reason we need a substitute (a savior) to pay our moral "fine," is because we have broken God's Law. To see how much we have transgressed this Law (the Ten Commandments), we will go through some of them -- Have you ever told a lie? Have you ever stolen something? Have you ever lusted after another person? If you answered "Yes" to these questions, you admit that you are a lying, thieving, adulterer at heart, and you have to face God on Judgment Day!

The italics are theirs. Now their message is standard Christian fear tactics: You better feed God’s ego because that is all he cares about, and the way you treat your fellow man is an accessory concern.

If you have used His name in vain, then you are guilty of "blasphemy" -- you've substituted God's holy Name for a curse word. Perhaps you've hated someone, then the Bible says that you are a murderer. You have violated God's holy Law, and you're in BIG trouble. On Judgment Day, you will be found guilty and end up in Hell. That's why you need the Savior. Merely being sorry for your sins, or confessing them to God won't help you. You must turn from sin (repent), and your faith must be in Jesus Christ alone. He is the only "grounds" for God to grant mercy towards you. If you're not sure of your salvation, make Psalm 51 your own prayer.

The italics are theirs. Notice that they again expose their analogy mistake by admitting that God’s judgment is not a fine but a prison sentence when they say “…you will be found guilty and end up in Hell,” but they don’t seem to notice their glaring mistake. If Jesus pays your court fine for you, will Jesus also spend eternity in Hell for you? Now that would be nice! This whole message of cleaning up crimes by spilling innocent blood (the Crucifixion) doesn’t translate at all into the “court fine” analogy. But Cameron and friends don’t seem to have either enough intellect to notice or enough honesty to care. I wish I had the opportunity to contact Cameron and ask him some follow up questions. For example, if a criminal murdered Cameron’s family in cold blood, would he be satisfied with an innocent six-year old girl serving the criminal’s death sentence instead? After all, isn’t that the kind of justice that Cameron is championing here?

I don’t know what more depressing, the fact that they expose the immorality of salvation through innocent blood by botching an analogy, or the fact that the vast majority of Americans cannot tell the difference.

So everyone, the lesson to learn today is, ironically, found within the Title of Kirk Cameron’s little e-booklet (though not in the way he intended). Save Yourself Some Pain, and reject these absurd, immoral, and repugnant afterlife beliefs.

A Patriotic Afterlife?

I wanted to post this blog entry yesterday for the fourth of July, but I was caught up in the festivities. So instead I present this as my post-fourth of July post. Please note that this post is not political in nature, nor is it meant to argue the merits of patriotism. This post is solely intended to examine the Christian Americans’ patriotic claims, as we all know that the Christian American population loves to play the “patriotism” card.

Dictionary.com defines patriotism as:

Love of and devotion to one's country.

I couldn’t have said it better. Surely, Christian Americans can be patriotic; they can have love and devotion to one’s country. I am not one to deny the patriotism of any Christian American. There are many Christians that are more patriotic than atheists, and there are many atheists that are more patriotic than Christians. But what belief system lays a foundation for a superior patriotism, the person that believes in the afterlife or doesn’t?

In a previous blog entry, “I Know What Your Motive Was Last Summer,” I pointed out the problems with primacy and afterlife belief. Primacy of afterlife belief is especially problematic for the Christian religion when it comes to patriotism. Here’s why:

Afterlife-belief demands the assignment of primacy to an afterlife, and the deity that resides in it. For Christianity, this deity is Jesus/God (Christianity considers Jesus and God to be the same entity).

Christianity demands that you put Jesus Christ first in your life. And the Christian concept of Heaven/Hell demands that you sacrifice your present-life interests for the sake of afterlife interests. Therefore, the first two value assignments for the Christian are 1) God, and 2) Heaven. A Christian would only be patriotic to the extent that it did not interfere with his/her loyalty to Jesus Christ and concern with getting into heaven. While a non-afterlife-believer, on the other hand, would have no such primacy/loyalty requirements.

The foundations of Christianity (loyalty to Jesus Christ and getting into heaven) knock patriotism into, at best, third place. What patriotic Christian would honestly sacrifice their Jesus/God for the sake of their country? And what patriotic Christian would honestly go to Hell for the sake of their country?

Sure, an atheist might not hold patriotism as their highest value either. But Christian afterlife-belief specifically precludes patriotism from being the highest, or even the second highest value. Atheism, or the lack of afterlife-belief, does not demand any such preclusion. A Christian can never hold patriotism as the highest ideal or as an end in itself, for it defies the very definition of “Christian”. But an atheist can hold patriotism as the highest ideal or as an end in itself; it does not defy the definition of “atheism”.

Christianity provides an inferior foundation for patriotism. Think about that the next time you say the Pledge of Allegiance.

Worshipping Death

The Rapture is a popular belief among Christians. This belief states that Jesus Christ will come back to Earth from heaven and send the devout, deserving Christians directly to Heaven just before the Tribulation or Armageddon occurs.

Rapture Letters is an extremely popular website where Christians can set up automated letter e-mailings to their friends and loved ones upon their ascension to Heaven, informing them of their departure. And the Rapture Ready Message Board is a place for Christians to discuss rapture-related issues.

If you spend some time reading posts on the Rapture Ready Message Board, you will quickly see that these Christians are obsessed with the rapture. They want it to happen, and they want it soon. For example, I as I am writing this article, I went to this post and found a registered user with the username "Can't Wait!". It doesn't take a genius to realize what it is that this person can't wait for. This user literally wants to leave this existence and go to the afterlife ASAP. The people on this message board want Jesus to come to Earth, swoop them up, and initiate a deadly Armageddon among those who are "not saved". I have even seen on numerous occasions people writing prayers on this message board, asking Jesus to come quickly; to come now. These people literally want to leave this life and pass on to the afterlife. They worship death in that they pray for this life to end.

This comes back to primacy assignment. These Rapture-obsessed Christians assign primacy to the afterlife, and therefore pray to have this life sacrificed to serve their afterlife desires. This current life plays second fiddle to them, and they only care about their deeds in this life to the point that it serves their position in the afterlife. What can be more inhumane than the sacrificing of their own current lives and the lives of their peers?

This is what happens when someone holds afterlife-belief as true. Christians have been praying for Jesus’ second coming, and the end of life as we know it, for over a thousand years. Of course, to the Christian, their actions are not inhumane. They think that getting more people to pray for the ushering in of the end of life is a good, humane, caring thing. Christians are not willfully evil, it is simply the afterlife-belief that distorts their views into thinking that death-worship is moral. They don't even see death as death, but as an ascension to a better place. Funny that whenever a Christian's life is threatened, instinct kicks in and they fight to preserve their life. When a car is about to run them over, they jump out of the way. When a criminal tries to kill them, they attempt to flee or defend themselves. Is that the sign of a true believer? Is there a good reason that the self-preservation instinct kicks in if they really desire to leave this life? Chief Justice Scalia even once said that it's no big deal if people get wrongly put to death, as God makes things right in the afterlife. Who wants to put their life in the hands of someone like that? Not even many Christians would want to have their life in his hands.

The person that does not believe in the afterlife will not likely wish for this world to end, or for their life to end. I know I sure don't. I am very happy with this life, and I wish to protect it. I value this existence, and my life in it, more than anything else. The Rapture-worshipping Christians do not; they worship death.

“I Cut Her Arms Off.”

Dena Schlosser cut her baby’s arms off in a bout of religious fervor on November 23, 2004. Dena was suffering from two things: postpartum depression, and afterlife/god belief. If Dena was suffering from only one or the other, her baby would likely still have all four limbs (as well as it’s life). But mix the two together, and you have a recipe for inhumane behavior.

According to the experts, religion is common among mothers who kill their children. In fact, all the mommy-slaying-baby stories in recent memory involve very religious women, and of course they cite religious factors when asked why they committed their heinous crimes.

Dena said she wanted to give her child to God. How lovely and considerate. At least, in her afterlife-tainted mind, it actually was a kind act. The afterlife is an even happier place than Disneyland! Why not save your dear child from the harsh realities of this life and send them straight to the afterlife, where it’s one big eternal Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory?

Dena confessed to the crime while talking on the phone to a 911 operator. One the 911 tape, the hymn “He Touched Me” can be heard playing in the background. During the crime-scene investigation, police took Bibles from the residence. Funny that Christian groups blame games like Grand Theft Auto for inspiring violent behavior and push to get retailers to not sell the game, but nobody is calling for Bibles to be removed from store shelves after something like this happens. I imagine that if Dena’s home were filled with copies of The Satanic Bible, the Christian groups would be pointing their fingers at that book. Why the double standard? Why don’t we call a spade a spade? In the eighties, there was a Satanic scare where false claims of Satanic-child sacrifice were being thrown around. Yet the Satanic Bible only speaks against sacrifice, and the Holy Bible repeatedly speaks in favor of many kinds of sacrifice, including child sacrifice.

Please realize that I am against all religions, including Satanism. But what I’m trying to point out here, is that people are not objectively looking at the dogma. People have false pictures painted in their heads of what they think these ideologies say, and they set up straw men to validate their erroneous beliefs. Surely, no Christian in America will agree that Dena did the Biblical thing nor did the right thing. Instead, the American Christians will likely claim that Dena was influenced by Satan or was simply crazy. They count the hits and ignore the misses, in addition to setting up straw men about these worldviews. I contend that Dena took a logical course of action in accordance with the ridiculous claims and worldview depicted in the Bible.

Afterlife-belief serves as a motivation and catalyst for inhumane behavior. If Dena didn’t believe in the afterlife, she wouldn’t have killed her baby. This is because she would not have believed that her child would go to a happier place by murdering her. Instead, she would have realized that keeping her baby happy means to provide for it and raise it properly in this life. Postpartum depression or no, Dena really did want the best for her child. She wanted her baby girl to be safe and happy. And it was her religion, her afterlife belief, that twisted her good intentions into a horrible act of infanticide.

Schiavo's Dead, But The Discussion Isn't

I know that the Schiavo thing is old and tired, but there are new and very relevant developments in her story, and considering that this is an anti-afterlife blog, it would be immoral for me to not discuss these developments, so bear with me.

The autopsy for Terri was recently completed, and CNN posted an article about the autopsy results. Just to get this out of the way, they found no signs of trauma or abuse from her husband. But let's focus on the most important part of this entire autopsy. Medical examiner Jon Thogmartin had this to say:

"The brain weighed 615 grams, roughly half of the expected weight of a human brain. ... This damage was irreversible, and no amount of therapy or treatment would have regenerated the massive loss of neurons."

This quote, along with the videos that everyone has seen, should make the consciousness-material brain dependency perfectly clear. For the afterlife-believers out there, think about the implications of these circumstances.

Terri was a non-functional human being with a decomposed brain that weighed half the size of a normal adult brain. Her consciousness deteriorated in direct proportion to the material deterioration of her brain. So if there is an afterlife, what happened to her consciousness? Did certain parts of her cognitive ability just float away and wait around for the rest to follow? Do you think the parts of her consciousness without brain matter to support them were waiting in the spirit realm to be reunited with the remainder of her mind once her body fully expired?

Do you think that her memories, which have shown to be composed of material electronic impulses and neural connections inside the brain, could still have "existed" in some other realm even without material support, and then can somehow be reattached to the rest of her consciousness after her death?

No doubt, pretty much all the afterlife-believers would answer yes to these questions. Well, I think that this presents a bit of a problem. To insist that the consciousness is not dependent upon material support for existence is to deny that material conditions can affect it. Therefore, I contend that if the afterlife exists, and material conditions do not affect a consciousness, then Terri Schiavo should have retained all of her conscious capabilities regardless of the condition of her brain. I contend that those portions of her consciousness would never have left her and that Schiavo would have still had full use of her mental facilities and memories regardless of the degree of deterioration of her brain.

If the consciousness truly was not dependent upon a material brain for existence, then it would not be negatively affected by brain damage or deterioration. Therefore, these portions of her consciousness would never have separated from the rest of her mind in the first place.

I contend that the fact that she lost mental capabilities from the deterioration of her brain is proof that her consciousness is affected by her material brain and that it cannot exist without material support.

If the afterlife-believer were to accept falsifiability for their position, then it would have just been proven false in the previous paragraph. If an afterlife-believer, setting up an unfalsifiable version of the afterlife claim, can say that consciousness will exist without material support, then I can use their same argument to insist that my Windows XP operating system will continue to exist after I smash the hard drive into a million pieces. Neither of those arguments would be falsifiable if "immaterialism" is to be incorporated. But if a material, quantifiable standard is employed (detectability of brain waves or other electric signals) then both of those arguments would be proven false.

In previous blog entries, I have given examples of machines that can detect, measure, and interpret thoughts. These thoughts are purely material, they require specific components of a functional brain to exist, and each kind of thought is quantifiable and distinct from the other. In previous blog entries, I have also discussed the burden of proof. I have met the burden of proof regarding the material dependency of the brain. No afterlife-believer has met the burden of proof to support the contention that consciousness can exist without a brain (organic or synthetic).

My proposition (dependency on matter for consciousness) is falsifiable. I never argue against the afterlife with any unfalsifiable argument, for an unfalsifiable argument is no argument at all. Most of the afterlife-believers' arguments are not falsifiable (therefore defeating themselves), and when they are falsifiable, they get proven false very quickly thanks to the evidence I have presented in this blog.

Terry Schiavo's consciousness was dead years ago and this autopsy proves it. Terry Schiavo did not pass into any afterlife. Her consciousness is not eternal; it only existed as long as her brain was able to support it. Terri's consciousness did not exist before she was born, and it doesn't exist anymore now that she is dead.

There is no afterlife.

Off Topic 2.0: Two Posts in One Day!

This blog, Kill The Afterlife, was mentioned in Carnival of the Godless #15. This installment of Carnival of the Godless is hosted by Nick Barlow's Weblog, "What You Can Get Away With".

I suggest you all check it out. All the blogs featured in Carnival of the Godless are worth checking out. Hellbound Alleee is also in there it seems. My blog is the last one mentioned.

Now, finally, we return to our regularly scheduled deconstruction of afterlife belief.

A Little Off-Topic, But...

I made this blog to tackle a somewhat under-addressed issue inside the atheist evangelical community: afterlife belief. All of my blog entries thus far have been about deconstructing afterlife belief. But today is different. Today is the first (although likely not the last) time I make a blog entry without any aferlife belief discussion.

The wonderful owners/writers of three blogs, The Evangelical Atheist, Atheist Revolution, and Freethought Weekly, got together and created a hub of sorts for atheist blogs and information sites! The hub is known as Atheism Online. I have of course placed a link to this site on my links sidebar.

So if any of you readers have of, or know of, atheist blogs, go check out the listing at Atheism Online. If you don't see the site listed, then add it! They also got a forum to chat in and a registration feature to utilize more site features. I suggest you all check it out.

And one more thing: The Evangelical Atheist recently ran a haiku/senryu contest, and I got three haikus selected as winners in the contest! Woohoo! Here are my winning haikus:

Christianity
Pretends you have a problem
Then sells you the cure

Communism’s dead
Christianity’s dying
Humanism rules

In a modern world
People will still kill for their
Invisible friend

You can find all the winning haikus here. Boywonder and some other people also have some excellent haikus on the page, and I think you will enjoy them.

And now back to our regularly scheduled deconstruction of afterlife belief.

Spend Spend Spend!

Why is life valuable? Because we have a finite amount of time. To live life is to spend time, and the fact that our lives are time-limited is what makes them so valuable and so priceless.

What about an eternal afterlife? Is there any value to it? In an eternal afterlife, you have an unlimited amount of time. You don’t even have a million years, or a billion years, or a googolplex of years; you have an infinite, non-numeric amount of time. You cannot quantify the time available in an eternal afterlife other than to say you have an "infinite" amount.

Of what value is something when you have an infinite amount of it? To expand on this question, let's use an analogy (I love analogies). Let's use a "Bill Gates" analogy. Bill Gates will represent a soul in an eternal afterlife, and Mr. Gates' money will represent time.

Now in this world, Bill Gates is the richest man in the world. But even then, his money is finite. It can be quantified in a specific number. For example, Bill Gates can have 99999 trillion dollars and could still earn more money. He can still add to that total. But what if Bill Gates had an infinite amount of money, with no numerical quantification possible? He would not be able to add any money to an infinite total. Bill Gates, with an infinite amount of money, could spend and spend and spend all day long and still have an infinite amount of money. There would be no point in him working for cash, as he would not be able to add to the total amount of money he had, since the amount would already be infinite. The money would lose value to Bill Gates because no matter what he did, he would not be able to get rid of it. Eventually, Mr. Gates could literally buy everything. He could purchase every material possession, he could pay for every conceivable service, to the point where he would have everything and there would be no further use of his money. In time, his infinite amount of money would become worthless.

Now let's apply this to the afterlife. In an eternal afterlife, your time is infinite. You would not be able to get rid of any of it. You would have an unlimited amount of time to do anything and everything. In an infinite, eternal afterlife, eventually you would do everything that could be done. You could eventually run out of things to do or accomplish, but you would never run out of time with which to do it in. Your eternity would, like Bill Gates infinite money, become worthless.

Even a technological immortality (of which I champion in previous posts) would not be like having an infinite eternal life (or afterlife). For a technological immortality would still have risk or finiteness associated with it. The technology wouldn't last forever without care or maintenance. Steps would have to be taken to prolong one's life, but having a guaranteed eternity of life would simply not be the case with a technological immortality. A technological immortality, at best, would simply provide the option of continued life provided that one has the resources, time, and energy to maintain this immortality.

But an eternal afterlife would not have any risk associated with it. No attention need be spent in maintaining this eternal property. An eternal afterlife would not grant time provided that one maintains or spends attention on devices that grant this time, as in a technological immortality. But instead, an eternal afterlife would grant unlimited time immediately, consistently, and without any energy or time spent on obtaining this eternal time.

What other things are found in the afterlife in unlimited, infinite amounts? Learning? Accomplishment? Goal reaching? Can there be an infinite amount of things to learn and goals to reach? I don't think that there can be an eternal amount of goals to reach in an eternal afterlife. Some might say that eternal happiness can be found in the afterlife. Happiness for what? Happiness is caused, and what can cause an eternal happiness? Money in itself doesn't make one happy, as any rich person will tell you. So why should simply being in an eternal existence make one happy? Maybe God would be the cause of the eternal happiness, but then that would be an artificial external happiness forced upon you, rather than being a happiness that comes from within. And in an eternal afterlife, even happiness would get boring.

How about the concept of eternal boredom? Boredom comes from being static, from a lack of stimulation, from a lack of new material to process. Even a person's favorite ice cream flavor gets boring if it's all they eat. Because an eternal afterlife would have infinite time, things would ultimately be static, or they would at least feel static. Everything that could be done would be done an infinite number of times in an eternal afterlife. The static feel of an eternal afterlife would cause eternal boredom. It would bring a feeling of eternal non-stimulation and eternal over-exposure to everything one could experience.

This is starting to sound a lot like eternal torment if you ask me! Eternal afterlife? No thanks! Quality is more important that quantity. I'll just stick with my finite, valuable, priceless time.

Divine Embryos

President Bush recently threatened to use his veto power to stop a stem-cell research bill passed by the senate. If Bush does indeed veto the bill, it would be the first time that he has ever used this power. How appropriate that the most religious president in recent memory might go down in history as vetoing only one bill, and having it be a pro-science bill.

Bush said "I made very clear to the Congress that the use of federal money, taxpayers' money, to promote science which destroys life in order to save life -- I'm against that."

Now we come to the point of this blog entry: Will Bush's veto of this bill "save" human lives (in the form of embryos)? I believe the answer to this question is artistically provided in this cartoon by Ruben Bolling: President Bush’s Photo-op at a Fertility Clinic. It is hosted by pharyngula.com. I didn’t want to post the image directly on my blog due to copyright concerns. So please take a moment to view this link.

Bush is obviously coming from the position that all these embryos have human souls or spirits, and therefore should not be "destroyed" in order to "save" the lives of other humans. For the sake of argument, let's entertain this position of Bush's. Let's imagine that these unborn embryos have human spirits, and that they deserve all the same protections and rights granted to the already-born variety of humans.

So will the defeat of this bill by Bush's veto save any of these embryo-lives? According to the bills supporters, the embryos in question are unused leftovers from fertility clinics that were destined to be destroyed anyway. So these embryos have two possible paths, depending on whether this bill gets vetoed or not:

1. The bill passes, and the unused embryos are "destroyed" in order to "save" lives through research.
2. The bill is killed by Bush, and the unused embryos are "destroyed" without any life-saving research performed.

The most important part to note here is that, if Bush vetoes the bill, these embryos will still be destroyed. The "destroy" factor in this situation never comes into question. The only thing that comes into question is whether or not these destined-for-destruction embryos will be used to save other people's lives or not.

Bush either does not understand the factors involved in this bill, or he is deliberately making false statements about the bill to serve his religious and/or emotional convictions. Personally, I can't figure out which is scarier: ignorance or willful fraud.

Now let's think for a minute about the spirit/afterlife factor involved here. Bush, being a Christian, believes that the spirits of these embryos are destined for heaven. Does Bush think that the spirits of these embryos still exist here, on Earth, inside the embryos themselves? Or does Bush think that the spirits of these embryos already made passage to God's kingdom? If the spirits are still inside the embryos, then destroying them will, in his mind, send the spirits into heaven and amount to "killing" them. But what I don't understand, is why Bush thinks that the embryos will somehow escape destruction if the researchers don't get their hands on them. Is the destruction of excess, unused embryos somehow more humane when they are not allowed to be used for research, but instead disposed of in a biological waste container?

And another factor comes into mind here: the legal factor. If these embryos are to be considered full human citizens with all the rights afforded to other American citizens (as Bush's worldview implies), then these embryos are obviously minors and their parents have full legal custody of them. And if a minor dies or is destined to die, born or unborn, the parents are the ones who are allowed to make the decisions in the minor's life/death journey.

If an already-born child is mortally wounded in a car accident and destined to die, the parents can choose to donate the child's organs to research. So if there are excess unused embryos from a fertility treatment, and they are destined to be destroyed, then the parents of these embryos should be allowed to donate them to research if they so choose. Consider it the ultimate organ donation. If it's noble for a parent to donate the heart or liver of a doomed child, then isn't it even nobler for a parent to donate a doomed embryo in it's entirety?

Clearly, Bush's Christian beliefs are muddling up his "compassionate conservative" side. I am betting that he simply doesn't understand the specifics involved in this situation, and that is why his argument is so obviously flawed. I am betting that he doesn't even realize that these embryos are doomed to destruction regardless of the passage of this bill. I am betting that he doesn't understand that if we are to treat these embryos as full humans and citizens, as he implies we should, then the matter of donating these excess embryos to research should be left up to the parents or legal guardians of said embryos.

Bush wants to save these embryos from destruction, but clearly, his veto wouldn't save them from a Goddamn thing.

Why Bush would want to keep these embryo-citizens from entering a blissful eternal afterlife in heaven is beyond me, but one thing is clear: the only thing his veto would "save" these embryos from, is helping their fellow man learn to survive longer in this life. I find it rather ironic, considering that keeping humans in this existence is exactly what Bush claims to be trying to do.

Do I Detect Sarcasm?

Dawson Bethrick from Incinerating Presuppositionalism was kind enough to provide an interesting link in the comments section of my last entry. Israeli researchers literally discovered the physical part of the brain that detects sarcasm. Here is a snip.

Researchers Pinpoint Brain's Sarcasm Sensor

The region, according to the researchers, handles the task of detecting hidden meaning, a crucial component of sarcasm. If that part of the brain is out of commission, the irony doesn't come through, the scientists report in the May issue of Neuropsychology.

These findings agree with an earlier blog entry of mine, where I stated that "In reality, all aspects of your consciousness, from communication to observation to constructing concepts to even feeling life itself, are hopelessly dependent upon your physical brain." And now with this post, I have given further evidence of this material dependency by showing that even the ability to understand sarcasm is subject to this dependency.

If consciousness can exist independently of a physical brain, then why do we always find that consciousness is affected every time we experiment with, or damage, the material brain? People with pieces of their brain removed or damaged will even attest to no longer having the capability provided by the piece of the brain that was altered. Loss of mental ability, from personality, to reasoning/thought, to motor skills, have all been well documented, and correspond with the damage or altering to the relevant areas of the brain.

Some pro-afterlifers have told me that you get back all your consciousness when you die, but I contend that they got it backwards. I contend that the evidence we have shows that these functions of the mind are dependent upon material support, and that when you die, you clearly lose all of your consciousness; you don't get it all back. The only way to ever bring back the mental abilities that were lost when the brain was altered is to bring back the actual, physical, supporting structures that provided those mental abilities. If mental functions could exist without material support, then one's consciousness would not lose those functions when their brain is altered or damaged.

Reducibility in Life Forms and the Afterlife

First off, I want to apologize for the time it took to submit another post. Work, school, and my car have all required a considerable amount of time and attention from me as of late. I want to update this blog at least twice a week if not more frequently, and I am rearranging my schedule to help accomplish that.

Most afterlife beliefs exclude life forms that are not Homo sapiens from passing onto the afterlife. I contend that these particular beliefs employ double standards and intellectual dishonesty by way of emotional exclusivity for humans. But to properly discuss and analyze the afterlife, one must know what comprises a living entity. Wikipedia has a great entry about the meaning of biological life.

Lets look at a few points in this Wikipedia article to get an idea of what biological life is:

In biology, an entity has traditionally been considered to be alive if it exhibits all the following phenomena at least once during its existence:

1. Growth
2. Metabolism, consuming, transforming and storing energy/mass; growing by absorbing and reorganizing mass; excreting waste
3. Motion, either moving itself, or having internal motion
4. Reproduction, the ability to create entities that are similar to itself
5. Response to stimuli - the ability to measure properties of its surrounding environment, and act upon certain conditions.

This is a good starting point for biological life, but Wikipedia also notes that this list is somewhat lacking:

These criteria are not without their uses, but their disparate nature makes them unsatisfactory from a number of perspectives; in fact, it is not difficult to find counterexamples and examples that require further elaboration. For example, according to the above definition, one could say:

-Fire is alive (this could be remedied by adding the requirement of locality, where there is an obvious feature that delineates the spatial extension of the living being, such as a cell membrane, although this would then discount fungi, and grasses from being alive).
-Stars could be considered living beings (for the same reasons as fire).
-Male mules are not alive as they are sterile and cannot reproduce.
-Viruses are not alive as they do not grow and cannot reproduce outside of a host cell.
-People who are impotent are not alive

Wikipedia then gets more specific regarding the definition of life by referring to biologists and terrestrial (Earth) life:

Biologists who are content to focus on terrestrial organisms often note some additional signs of a "living organism", including these:

1. Living organisms contain molecular components such as: carbohydrates, lipids, nucleic acids, and proteins.
2. Living organisms require both energy and matter in order to continue living.
3. Living organisms are composed of at least one cell.
4. Living organisms maintain homeostasis.
5. Species of living organisms will evolve.

All life on Earth is based on the chemistry of carbon compounds. Some assert that this must be the case for all possible forms of life throughout the universe; others describe this position as 'carbon chauvinism'.

For simplicity’s sake, lets confine our discussion of life to Earth-based, carbon life (all Earth life is carbon-based). Now that we have a good idea of what life is, lets compare specific examples. In case you don’t know, all organisms on Earth are divided into 5 "kingdoms": Bacteria, Protozoa, Fungus, Plants, and Animals. Despite the cries of many religious people, human beings (Homo sapiens) belong in the "animal" kingdom.

Let's compare humans to the Wikipedia criteria for being alive. It is pretty obvious that humans meet each requirement. What about jellyfish? Well, they meet all these requirements as well. Lets get a bit more basic. What about a tree? A tree meets these requirements just as well as a human does. What about mushrooms? So do they. What about bacteria, say, of the flesh-eating variety? Well, flesh-eating bacteria meet the "life" requirements just as well as humans do. All of these entities I mentioned share many of the same things: They all have DNA, they all reproduce, they all consume food and produce waste, they all meet the requirements for life equally.

Now that I've pounded that point home, I can make the connection to the afterlife. Why am I so concerned with what is and is not alive? Simple! To support a statement about the afterlife, which is:

To honestly support an afterlife-belief, one must do so for all entities that meet the "life" requirements. If an afterlife exists for humans, it must also exist for all bacteria, protozoa, fungus, plants, and animals.

The phrase "afterlife" means that a consciousness or soul will continue to exist after the physical death of a body. Life is defined as above thanks to a wonderful Wikipedia article. Therefore, there is no reason to think that Homo sapiens exclusively pass on to the afterlife. Indeed, there is no reason to think that any life form would not pass onto the afterlife.

From the animals and plants we eat, to the fungus we top our pizzas with, to the bacteria we massacre with every breath we take, to the dust mites that live and die on our skin, to the yeast we cook with and consume, all of these entities are equally qualified for afterlife membership if we are to think that humans are destined for an afterlife.

And here is the reductionist portion: All life forms are either single-celled or multi-celled. A single blood cell from a human is alive in that it, along with its counterparts (other human cells), works cooperatively to form a complete life form.

If a skin cell on a human dies, wouldn't it also qualify for afterlife-passage all by itself? If not, then what about an independent single bacteria cell? What about a single human embryo cell (before the cell division begins)?

I have heard of religious arguments (especially Christian arguments) that state that only humans go into the afterlife because only humans have sentience or a consciousness or soul. These arguments are not only unevidenced, but when the religious person submits criteria for the qualification of such a "soul" or "sentience," their assertion of human exclusivity can be proved demonstrably false. What I mean is, the criteria that a religious person can submit for the existence of a human "soul" or "sentience" can also be met by most, if not all, living species. And if any non-sapien members of the homo genus still existed, they would likely meet the criteria as well.

In addition, the "humans-only" afterlife argument looses strength when one looks at the pro-afterlifer's views on stem cell research or single-cell human embryo research. To destroy a stem cell or another form of single (not yet divided) human embryo cell is, according to pro-afterlifers, the murder of a human being, and that human (single cell) is imagined to pass on to the afterlife. This is a blatant double-standard and a complete violation of the religious person's previous criteria for having a soul or sentience, because these "human" cells are no more complex than the single celled bacteria found in everything from food, to snot, to breath. In addition, I contend that a dolphin (which would not qualify for afterlife existence according to most religions), meets the "soul" and "sentience" criteria much better than a human stem cell or embryo.

Multi-celled life is reducible to single cells, and therefore, the afterlife belief cannot be restricted to a given species of life form without the use of intellectual dishonesty and/or a double standard. Religious pro-afterlifers concede this point when they fight for the rights of human stem cells and embryos, but they turn around and deny this point when you ask them which life forms qualify for passage into the afterlife.

I Know What Your Motive Was Last Summer!

An anonymous comment poster said something very revealing today, and I thought I would make a blog entry about it, just to drive a point home. Although this post will be mentioning God more than the afterlife, I think it is still relevant, for God resides in the afterlife, and one will expect to meet God only when one gets to the afterlife. The accessory motives behind actions, whether its God or the afterlife, are practically the same for the purposes of this argument. Anonymous said:

And worshipping God is not just putting Jesus first. You worship God when you take a walk, when you spend time with your family, when you help your neighbor, when you go to work, etc. Everything you do can be done to His honor and glory.

I agree that its not "just" putting Jesus first. Its also about abstinence (not just the sexual kind), and self-depreciation, among other things. And this is evident in his statement. One thing that came to mind is my George Eliot quote from my earlier blog entry entitled "What's Your Motive?" And this is why today's blog entry is also about motive. It seems many people still just don't understand. Let's dissect anonymous' statement a bit further.

Anonymous said that when you do normal activities, like working, spending time with your family, helping your neighbor, and other tasks, you should do those tasks not for the sake of the tasks and your own happiness, but for the glory of God. What this is, is the "accessory motives" that George Eliot talked about.

See, if I am to help my neighbor because I like to help him, that is a primary motive. If I spend time with my family because it makes me happy to do so, that is a primary motive. The motive is contained within the action that I am doing.

But, if you help your neighbor or spend time with your family for the glory of God, then that is an accessory motive. This means that the motive is not contained within the action itself, but instead the motive is contained within the "glory of God."

Anonymous will help his family not because he cares about his family, but because he cares about God. Anonymous will do whatever it is that his God wants, rather than do what is objectively good for his family. If God suddenly commands anonymous to kill his family (God has commanded killing before), then anonymous will do it, because the glory of God is his primary motivation. Now if anonymous balks at such an evil command (as many reasonable people will), then anonymous would be conceding that he is putting his families priorities over God's, and therefore he wouldn't be following his religious commands, and probably would catch some very angry Godly wrath (if God existed, that is).

Anonymous will say "I spend time with my family because it pleases God." Anonymous has the inferior accessory motive.

But I will say "I spend time with my family because it pleases my family and myself." I have the superior direct motive.

Maybe this is why religious mothers are more likely to kill their children. They put their God/afterlife beliefs in the #1 spot.

I don't think anonymous is a very good Christian. Anonymous probably doesn't follow the Bible's commands too closely. For example, Jesus said that if any man wants that he should not rule over them, then you should bring that man forward and slay him before Jesus. A more clear example of the inhumanity of accessory religious/afterlife/God motives would be hard to find in the Bible. Does anonymous follow this rule? Or does he let non-believers remain alive when he encounters them? Would anonymous slay me - an infidel who refuses to allow Jesus to rule over me - if he bumped into me on the street? Or would he let me live?

If anonymous killed me, then he is following the Jesus/afterlife priority, and he is a good Christian. But if anonymous let me live, then he is instead following the humane real-life/godless priority, and he is not a good Christian.

Accessory motives are always inferior to direct motives. If anonymous helped his neighbor for the sake of his neighbor, and not the sake of God, then anonymous would be following the correct and, objective moral choice, because he would be basing his actions regarding an entity on the interests of that entity. But if anonymous helped his neighbor for the sake of God, then anonymous would be following an arbitrary and immoral choice, because he would be basing his actions regarding an entity on the interests of something other than that entity.

The lesson for today is this: The better afterlife-believer you are, the worse a humanitarian you are. And the worse afterlife-believer you are, the better humanitarian you are. Just look at those Bible verses and those baby-killing mothers if you don't believe me.