Chapter Four; SOME THOUGHTS FROM THE GOD DELUSION part eleven

Observation and thoughts derived from the book The God Delusion: Chapter 10, Dawkins wrote the statement that 96 percent of the population of the United States thinks that they will survive their own death. If one was to say that should I jump off this 12 story building unaided, after I hit the bottom of the pavement, I will survive that fall. Any reasonable person would have no other recourse but to find the nearest phone and call 911 for emergency services. Because my statement would surely reflect a total disconnect to the reality of the Universe. But, if one has a belief in a dogma that tells them that no matter what death they face, they will survive their death, based upon a religious dogma. The general population in the United States will think that they are a person of deeply held religious beliefs.
To even believe to survive after one ’s own death when no known physical reality, experiment or study can support or attest to that possibility, is surely the zenith of a person with a grand delusion. Even marginalized concepts, such as ghosts, trolls, spirits, angels and so forth, boarder on the absurd when one is dealing with the reality of their own life. I tried to come up with some sort of comparison, which would be a simile with that concept. The closest one I could come up with was, if someone believed that Alice in Wonderland was based upon eyewitness evidence instead of Lewis Carroll's imagination. Even this is a poor example to show the level of self deception and blind faith one must go through in order to accept such an absurd premise. I really cannot imagine a more bizarre and unbelievable concept. But as Douglas Adams once wrote, [to paraphrase] The more unbelievable the idea is, the more virtuous the person is that believes it or as Richard Dawkins wrote, “Indeed, they may feel that the less evidence there is, the more virtuous the belief.” I assume that must have been the idea behind The Electric Monk idea in Adams' writings.
Other observations and views from The God Delusion. The premise that life originated on Earth, is one that is abiogenisis. While no one can for sure know the way life began on Earth, the evidence that there is life on Earth leads one to investigate with scientific means, as to what life is and how long it has been on the planet. These areas are supported by many areas of scientific research including: Biology, Physics, Chemistry, paleontology, Plate tectonics, Molecular Biology, archeology, genetics, climatology, astronomy, cosmology and many other disciplines of scientific research.
One question that I have not seen addressed or answered was on a multi-genesis of life on Earth. When dealing with the probability of life and the processes that are needed to be in place for it to occur through chemical and physical forces, one must conclude that the possibility for more than one origin of life on Earth is as likely as a single source of life on Earth.
I bring this point up not as a scientist but as a layman that finds this question interesting. Is it possible that the origins of, say, plants and animals and fungus , all began with different points of origins and that the most convenient way to transfer molecular information is in the form of DNA nucleotides? I don't know and I have not heard this addressed. Could DNA simply be the “Lego blocks” of the biological universe and on our planet it makes for the most convenient way to have life.
I did attend a lecture of Richard Dawkins in Norman, OK and asked him this very question. I have looked for the video on line , and as of the date of this writing, it is not available. I do know that it was recorded.

He made the allegory that when you lose your keys you look under the lamp post because that is where the light is. (This relates that there is the possibility that other life may have evolved and died out prior to it taking foothold. We can only find something in the areas where we are able to examine.) But, there is still a possibility that non DNA based life is on Earth. A chance but very remote. There isn't any chemical or physical reason why it cannot happen.

He mentioned the work of two scientists, but I do not recall their names. The result of the research touched upon the view that DNA research had determined once DNA was established, the four chain nucleotides were "'frozen in place." This indicates that since all life known on Earth is based upon the four series that the conclusion is that all known life had a common origin. [xvii]
Dawkins mentioned that it is possible that life could be based upon some other set of building blocks, even here on Earth. This was toward the end of his answer. But this really points to discovery of life extra-terrestrial. As of right now, we only have life on Earth to compare life to.
He didn't give a "yes" or "no" answer, as a good scientist should avoid, but the conclusion I gather is: Yes there could have been multi-origins of life, but if they did, they were evolutionary dead ends or those organisms became food for the current set of DNA based life. As far as Biology and other science “know”, only DNA based life is known to exist in The Universe.
The point went something like this. Regardless of how common or rare life is, it has happened at least one time. (this got a chuckle from the audience) "We know this because we are here." But depending on the yet to be discovered million and millions of stars and yet undiscovered planets to find life on, this will lead to an answer to this type of question.
In another part of the lecture, Dawkins said there are also countless questions that we do not have answers to. This seems to be one that we can ask but not answer from our limited place in space and time. Thankfully, science looks like it will have plenty of work ahead of it for many years to come.

What is the evidence that life is formed from a single source? Isn't it DNA itself? I know about the mapping of genome and the matching of similar genes in different species. But isn't that also the most convenient way for life to exist? Again to refer to Douglas Adams, Isn't this hole nicely suited to me, so “says” the water held in said puddle.
Simply put, DNA may be the most convenient way for life to sustain itself regardless of what form it took in basic form. Plants, animals and fungus all could be part of a cosmic factory that made several attempts at life and only two or three were sustained with the natural forces of the planet working both for and against life. As far as the planet Earth goes, there is no reason to have life on it than any other planet. There were millions of years with no life on Earth and there will be millions of years in the future that no life will be on Earth. We just got lucky that our time is now. Imagine the cosmic queue for life yet to come. There is no divine plan for creation of anything that is alive. There is life because there is life. We beat the odds.
So what drives the forces of life on Earth. It could be the basic idea that life itself is an oddity and that life seeks to sustain itself because it “knows” it has no right to exist. The truth of the matter is rocks , water, metals and other non-living things on Earth have the “right” to be here well before any bacteria, fish, bird, shrub or tree do. For the inorganic and non living are what most of the known universe is made up of. They are the majority.
Now the exclusivity of life is based upon all the known places we know life exists, namely Earth. There has been recent evidence that life may have existed on ancient Mars and even the possibility that it could currently exist subsurface on the Mars. But in view of the inability to analyze any samples of what life may be on Mars, the comparison to life on Earth must remain , at best, a subject of conjecture and preliminary data. There has even been hypothesis put forth for life on other places in our solar system. One of the more bizarre ones is for floating life in the clouds of Venus. That indeed would be a most usual life form. I feel that one is at best a wish.
Why is this question relevant? I would like to try to address this since the idea seems to be among homo sapiens that we somehow have a privileged or special place among the life on this planet. What is the chance that life would happen on Earth? There were indeed many overwhelming factors that had to be overcome for just the change of life to occur. Based upon calculations from Drake's Equation, [xviii] one could figure that the chance of life to occur starts in the billion to one or even trillion to one. This, of course, is a high hurdle for life to overcome. But with each step life did indeed make the next step and we are here, alive on this planet, in this solar system, in this galaxy, in this universe. So regardless of the unlikelihood, we are here to prove that life did, indeed, on at least one planet, on Earth. This equation doesn't require any outside influence of a supernatural for life to occur. The signs of life through out the universe seem to support the Drake equation, but as we only have one source planet of life, that is a bit disingenuous. But in The Milky way we are looking now with the Kepler Space observatory to find other planets that could support life.
But it is not beyond reason or even probability. It is somewhat amazing to me how the critics of evolution will point out the “impossibility” of DNA or RNA from forming in the hostile environments of ancient Earth but have no problem with saying that man was scooped up from the ground, like so much kitty litter, and then a god blew on it and it magically came alive. Science can offer such evidence of life making processes as the experiment to show how these building blocks may have formed.
Creationists counter with, “because the Bible says so,” and “Scientific experiments that point the way to origins using natural processes are wrong and miss the fundamentals. God made life by speaking it into existence.”
The hurdle , that the nucleic acid had to over come to use amino acids and proteins to carry genetic information, is low compared to the “Supernatural to Natural Transference Device” hurdle that is “required” for immaterial things to become material. If I was to gamble on these two outcomes, even bet my life on it, I would take the long term evolution train every time.
I have heard an Intelligent Design advocate ask a question. [Isn't it true that the basic amino acids required to form DNA are not able to form in the primitive Earth?] This is an area of ongoing research . And while an answer is yet to be gained, there is an understanding of the process that these elements could come together using several possible models. The Miller-Urey experiment, in 1952, is well known for using the gases present in the young Earth, based upon conditions determined at that time, forming basic amino acids under laboratory conditions that are needed for life.
One of the best things about science is that not knowing an answer doesn't end the process. It encourages it. So science and the Theory of Evolution do not have all the answers. That isn't the purpose of science. The idea is , that with reason and study, a more plausible idea of The Universe develops out of factual information than from fictional stories that try to match the dots in the sky with exotic sounding stories.
There is a concept that I use often with people that try to exert their fictional (religious) view of reality as the right one. It can not be conclusively proven that the world of the movie "The Matrix" is not the reality in which we live in. As far as evidence, it is as unfalsifiable as almost every other religion. Any proof that would be offered to counter that view of that reality is in itself the proof that it is part of The Matrix, and thus supports the dogma of one who might believe such a story. The same is true with most other religious dogma.
This whole idea of faith and belief is something that helps support the prejudice of human beings , that we are special and life is unique. As I stated before, the mass of material in The Universe is not in support of life at all. The largest mass of known elements in The Universe are hydrogen and helium. These make up the fuel of the stars. Then when reducing down to planets, we can take an example for our own solar neighborhood that most of the planets are gas giants, made up of the same two elements and other trace elements including metallic hydrogen. However, life, which is made up of some of the more rare elements has most say in how The Universe is viewed on Earth. Life views itself as special and the rest of The Universe as worthless or of little value.
This relates to the seminar that Dawkins gave on "The Purpose of Purpose" which I attended in Norman, Oklahoma. What is the purpose of a bird's wing or a cave or a green field? Dawkins used the terms, archeo-purpose and neo-purpose. Archeo-purpose relates to what an item is for that is naturally occurring. Such as mentioned a birds wing or a certain color or sent of a flower. Evolutionarily, a birds wing has no purpose it serves a function of flight that was the path that natural selection took for the class of animals aves. As we well know not all aves, have the capacity of flight. [thanks to Morgan Freeman] But the wing of an aircraft is created for a specific purpose. That purpose can be to transport people from one location to another location through the air. This human created wing would be called a neo-purpose item.
So humans determine what is the purpose of items we make and because we have the capacity to reason and associate form and function of items and cause and effect of events, we make assumptions of the purpose of the things that natural has in it. This assigned purpose from humans mixed with faith would lead people to have a prejudiced view of the purpose of a naturally occurring event. Such as earthquakes, hurricanes and other natural events. This complemented with man's ability to make up stories and manipulate people and nature makes events seem as if they have a purpose and even a divine one some would say.
Having such a view would tend to minimize nature, which is the dominate force in The Universe, in favor for a supernatural perspective, which is a totally make believe view of The Universe. The steps that would follow with this view, are ones that logic and reason wouldn't be compatible.
If one believes that cows, chickens and pigs are here by a divine purpose that serves man, one would act according to the belief and not see them as co-evolutionary partners but their meat to serve the nutritional needs of mankind. If one overlooks nature and decides that a place exists in the sky were everyone can go to live after they die. [what does that mean?] Then instead of having a purely natural point of view, this will diminish fact based concepts for imagination based concepts of The Universe. Understanding the concepts of archeo-purpose and neo-purpose can greatly work to clarify our place in The Universe.
To ask such questions as, “What is God's purpose for your life? What Would Jesus Do? Why are we here? And other questions that look to a divine for answers, fail to recognize the basic reality of life. This reality is regardless it is for any life period to occur anywhere it has happened. As unlikely as this makes life to occur naturally, the unlikelihood increases even more so, and with increased improbability, if one supposes a god did it. This concept doesn't disprove a god but the evidence for the known nature of how The Universe works versus the addition of the unknown supernatural, while highly improbable, is still the most likely and more probable answer for life , the universe and everything. [xix]
To explain, As an atheist, my view on origins is based upon the ideas presented by astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, geology, and other science disciplines. I will be early to admit my limited understanding of advance concepts of science but I do have a healthy overview of the concepts and I can reasonably listen to lectures and seminars by professionals in the fields and generally understand their ideas. With this in mind, I find the evidence that is presented in science and nature to be the most reasonable and reliable answers for how nature works.
The answers rely upon observations, testing, and established scientific method to come up with the steps of how The Universe is formed. Are all the answers there? No. Do I understand all the answers that are there? No. But I understand enough to have a clear picture. Like a mosaic picture of ancient times, if your are too close you can miss the big picture. So I have a big picture understanding of nature. I would charge that anyone that claims to have all the answers is surely a person to be avoided.
Then there is the view of the supernatural, that it has all the answers. [This in itself should make everyone suspect. After all, no one likes a know it all, or a smart ass.] Divine answers to natural questions not only dismiss actual knowledge but but provide answers to question that science may not have answers to yet. Not to mention those adherents that profess to tell their followers the location of an actual Heaven or Hell, Garden of Eden, Nirvana, Shangri-La, Shamballa and so forth. After all if you want people to trust you enough to place their supernatural life in your hands then you better have all the answers to their tough questions. Plus if you are trusted, they are more likely to hand over their hard earned money.
So is science hard to understand? You bet it is. But it is even more difficult to understand why people will believe an answer that only proof of concept is that a person has faith that it is true. Take all the science in the world and a devout adherent can replace it all with faith. Faith and no proof whatsoever. I believe it was James Randi that said that you take the technology of Today back 50 years and it looks like magic. As of this writing that would 1959. Just on the dawn of the space race with the Soviet Union. The idea that you could take a picture with a devise as small as a credit card, call virtually anyone around the world directly, hold millions of songs on a small metal box and play them through tiny ear pieces, To be able to find answers to questions to just about anything in seconds without having to look it up in an encyclopedia or go to a research library is a thing of science fiction 50 years ago.
But there were people then that were not willing to rely upon the best the world had to offer and worked to turn science fiction into reality. Today, the James Bond tracking system seems quite quaint and antiquated for today. Granted the space age laser weapons have not become a hand held commodity but the non-lethal force shock guns certainly have come a long way and are an object that would have been viewed as magic or out of this world at the time. Other such common place items now such as music and TV from space on our home and personal entertainment devices, The ability to record and playback video on a card no bigger then a postage stamp. Physical letters becoming almost extinct as a means of communication, being replace by digital communication with both live and delayed messages.
As humans, we can accept advances in things we do not understand as long as there is a socialize reason to accept such things. Better house cleaners, more entertainment, faster food, more information, cleaner hands, longer lasting tires and more as long as these things improve the quality of life and do not touch upon the reasons for life. For that area doesn't belong in the area of technology but in the area of the lack of technology. Faith needs no upgrading, there is no need to have a “New and improved” faith, of a even “longer lasting” faith as faith just wants to be accepted as simply as it can. Once faith has found a nice home it will grow and grow into other areas like an ivy vine that will cover a yard and wall. Where nothing can be see without it being seen through the ivy vines.
Areas of live that prior to faith were unrelated such as working and sexuality are now joined in the ever entwining vines of faith. Faith consumes reason. As it does it dulls the senses and makes reasonable people reject facts and act upon superstition.
This is to say that the no matter how amazing science proves the facts of The Universe, the idea that a god created The Universe makes the concept of that creator even more complex than the natural solution. In the future the Large Hadron Collider [LHC] and the remaining function of the Hubble Space Telescope and the other space research devices and the thousand of hard working researchers and scientists will shine more light on the origins of The Universe. But there will not be a purpose found in any of this.
To this end I would even assert further that the God delusion is a soft name for the hysteria that the religious suffer. Religion reminds me of Douglas Adams' Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal [xx]. If you do not know what that is, feel free to read his book or any other the other mediums which are "rarely done well."

[xvii] http://nobelprize.org/educational_games/medicine/dna_double_helix/readmore.html
[xviii] http://www.setileague.org/general/drake.htm
[xix] Thank you, Douglas Adams
[xx] http://hitchhikers.wikia.com/wiki/Ravenous_Bugblatter_Beast_of_Traal


Coming in the next posting: God in Chaos: LARRY KING AND THE GHOSTS HUNTERS part twelve

Chapter Two; MAKING THE SPIRIT REAL part six

Other adherents will offer this option to me, “If you only would trust your heart, then you would know that God is real.” To this I say, “I have followed what I felt was the Lord's leading in my life for many things as surely as you feel that you are now.” This also includes for family, friends, in jobs, relationships, where to go for trips and much more. There is not a single area that I didn't try to “bring under” the power of God. Even my marriage. But the facts of reality must be faced and there is no reason to hold on to ideas that continually show themselves to be invalid and even harmful to follow.
During times of prayer, devotion and faith, I had many good times and made great friends. But I will leave discussion of that for another time and place. One highlight I want to touch on is prayer. Prayer seems to be central to almost all faiths; so I feel this is a crucial area to write about. As far as I know, there is no religion that doesn't, at some point or in some way advocate prayer. Therefore, this is the reason I am picking this as a common thread that runs through all faiths worldwide. I was a “prayer warrior” as the term is used. I prayed before every meal, in public, in private, with friends, with family, and everywhere. Who knows how many people I may have offended by my display of piety. I felt it was the right thing to do. Sometimes an older person would say to me when I was leaving a restaurant, “how refreshing it was to see a young man praying in public”.
Both The Navigators and COPWOC encouraged a good prayer life. With The Navigators, it was more of a prayer diary or prayer list, faithfully kept; plus taking time out once a week to focus your prayer life. For me, I usually took Saturday morning at a park or a restaurant. I liked parks more because I could actually walk around while I prayed. It was quite structured, as well. I would normally take about five minutes per topic and continue throughout the hour. I would use Bible verses. [I assume this was done to remind God what he said and let him know that I knew he could answer my prayer.] I used a standard opening, praising God and all his wonderment ; then for my friends and the family; spreading and sharing the Gospel of Christ. I also took a few minutes to pray for the government and work and all the things that affected my life. While this was normally done alone, a friend or two of mine would often go to the park. We would pick out different sides to “stake out” so we wouldn't interrupt each other or get distracted by talking about things.
By the height of my prayer life, I was probably praying about four to five hours a week, which to me was just part of the 16.8 hours I owed God for a tithing of my time. After all, if all things were from God, time definitely is one of the most valuable things that God can give us. So, I gave back to God time he gave me. This may be why I find the time spent in worship and prayer so wasted. Even if you,re reading a comic book, I feel you are better using your time, than wasting it on a God that can do nothing for you.
After I spent my hour praying on Saturday, it was usually time to have a meal. When I was attending Kansas State University, we often had weekend get together that included grilling and games of either volleyball and/or Frisbee. Saturdays were pretty fun days, normally speaking. It sure was a point of secret pride, when I mentioned that during my quiet time I received a certain insight from the Lord. Being able to share a spiritual message was vital to being in the loop of The Navigators group.
With COPWOC, [Cathedral of Praise World Outreach Center, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma], the focus of prayer was more like the way that you prayed, having a prayer language, speaking in tongues, creating an actual prayer closet so you could be left alone while you prayed. Of course the content was important, but not as important as letting the Holy Spirit move you to follow its lead in your prayer. The prayer language was one that was not needed but greatly moved you into the higher levels of the pentecostal and fundamental churches. I attended the A.C.T.S. Group at COPWOC and before the Monday night service, they had a smaller meeting of the more devout. This was where people could show their stuff. I quickly found out that my way of praying was something that made me stand out. I was able to clearly think and speak the dogma of calling down blessings and binding the various spirits that we tended to bind with our ineffectual words. It was always odd to me to bind spirits, such as fear, weakness, timidity, pride, along with the spirits of cancer, mental illness and other actual sickness that needed medical help, not a prayer. But I believed, so I did it. After all, if you believe, you'll believe just about anything. I guarantee that if the President of the Mormon church or the Pope of any other charismatic religious leader said they saw their dead brother turn into a wolf, their follows would believe them. But if Alvin, the Poncan Indian says it, people think he is nuts. I see both ideas, again, equally valid.
It is not something that I really supported, but having people pray for the sick was often painful for me to watch. I would, of course, pray for the sick. But I couldn't ever get over the idea that God made doctors for a reason. While prayer is OK, the best medicine is a reliable treatment from proven methods. God can do His healing anyway he wishes. I would never encourage anyone to leave the treatments of their doctors for a healing of the sick by prayer. Even the theology of that idea is weak, because the faith of both the one healing and the one receiving the healing “must” be strong to accept it, according to the dogma. To me, that left too much to risk.
Oddly, my public display of belief was put to the challenge when I was in the Army. In the chow hall, several other men knew I was a devout Christian who would pray before they would eat. The first one or two things they would say following prayer, would be about how they had just met a girl and had sex with her. Or, they would use curse words about a topic they were discussing. I felt that this was a horrible witness for Jesus and wished they wouldn't even pray before they ate. I never had the courage to speak to them about this issue. Who knows, they may have done it just to offend me. I would never do that personally. I may think to myself, “I hope the food isn't so bad you have to pray you survive the meal.” I have been known to make the “raspberry” sound if I happen to catch people doing that. But that is more out of reflex, not really trying to make fun of them.
Part of my prayer lifestyle included writing down what I was praying for and then writing the results of that prayer. I kept extensive prayer lists with dates, people, names and needs. Like I said earlier, I spent an hour every Saturday, for years, going to a “quiet place” to pray , in addition to the daily prayers I did throughout the rest of the week. Unlike when a person had a need and you or a person may sympathetically say, I'll pray for you, and then not. This was something I asked many of my friends about, at that time. Most agreed they had failed to actually follow up and pray. My answer was, why wait to pray later, take them by the shoulder or hand, bow your head and pray right there on the spot. Wherever you find the need to pray, make the time to pray. That was my modus operandi. I found that doing this not only showed the person I actually meant what I was saying, but it also usually made them feel a bit better. It gave me the right to ask about the topic of the prayer, next time I saw them, if they didn't bring it up. Most of the time, they didn't bring it up, because prayer doesn't work.
The guilt I felt, over seeing a person with whom I promised to pray for and failed, too soon went away. If for some reason I was not able to pray, I would write it down and add it to my list. Some things were easy to have an answer for: jobs for friends, someone needing money for a conference, car needs to be repaired. To be honest, if you're are praying for things that are common to have in our society, the likelihood for success is greater. People actually need things like jobs, cars, clothes and food. Other prayers were not so easy, such as: hoping that a family member would turn to the Lord; praying to have a girlfriend or boyfriend as the case may be, or, dealing with sexual temptation. I am sure many of you reading this have family or friends praying for you now. Or if you are a believer, you may be praying for someone to come to some sort of faith, more than likely, a faith similar to yours. But isn't that prayer just a selfish to make them be like you, instead of letting them be the person they want to be. Even if the person is on drugs and cannot function, you need to take care of them, not force religion down their throat. Ask any relapsed addict. They are just as likely, if not more so, to blame God for their relapse than if they were treated in a reasonable method that allows for failure. They will blame God for failing them or blame God for letting them fall back. Then the likelihood of getting them back into your faith is all but gone.
Or if you have come out of the religious experience, you may have prayed for others as I have. Like me, I am sure they thought that the power of prayer would have some real effect in your life. As the list got longer as to what I was praying for, the answered side was very empty. I got to the point that I began to use hash marks to count repeated prayers to save space. Even with clear evidence in front of my face, of the ineffectiveness of prayer, I still held to my faith. The answered prayers must have only been about 15 to 20 percent on my prayer lists. [See comments on prayer in the Mormon Mission section]. Of course, some prayers I had no way of knowing if they were answered. But the ones I could find out, that is ask someone about, were well under the 50 percent mark.
I just concluded the possible answers that typical apologetic use to justify the failure of prayer to work. There is the “God did answer the prayer” answer, then the “God said 'no' to your prayer” answer and everyone's favorite “God said wait” answer to your prayer. It is really a no loss situation for God, with those answers. If only I could have those options when I was in college for my exams, I would have been the valedictorian.
One thing I would like to point out about my comments up to this point. What I have been talking about is the reflection of reality upon the cloudiness of religion and dogma. I often include the word Dogma and adherents for this simple reason. Many people say they don't believe in religion, but believe in God. They do not have a standard or regular church they attend or even want to attend a church, but have a societal view of the meme of the religion of their community.
Because of this, there will inadvertently come areas that can be attacked or seen as weak in my topic. This is, of course, expected and I do have any problem with that. I make no claim that what I am saying ties up all the loose ends that have taken thousands of years to develop. All I am saying is that if you are willing or able to look for the errors in the book, please continue that into every other book you would read or any other source of information you would allow the privilege into your mind. So feel free to rip my words apart if you feel the need, but be sure to use the same standard for reality reflection in your religious documents, too.

Chapter One; LIVING IN THE SPIRITUAL WORLD part two

Somewhere between my curious nature and my desire to interact with my environment, I looked critically at the world. So as a child, when my family went to church, I really had no idea what it was about. I liked the children sermons given at Our Savior's Lutheran Church. It was fun to go in front of the sanctuary and sit with the other kids beside the pastor, since he seemed to be the reason everyone was there.


When I was a child my family attended this church in Durant, OK. It is Our Saviour's Lutheran Church. It was my first time to be exposed to anything religious. The sanctuary looks nearly the same as it did when I was a child. I remember that the cross was quite impressive and I would stare at it endlessly, enjoying all the colors and shapes of the tile artwork.

Some things I recall about church at an early age involves a lot of people that I didn't know. We shared Sunday School classes with kids that were not in my regular school. When singing songs, the words in the hymnals were not sung in the same order as a book is read. You got dress up in nice clothes when you went to church. The buildings were nice and had a lot of cool stuff to look at. Plus, we usually went out to eat on Sunday after church. These were a few of the reasons that I liked going to church.




This was the first church I ever attended of my own choice, Bethel Baptist Church in Ardmore, OK. It was just a few blocks from my house so I walked there most every Sunday morning. When I was staying with my Grandmother the Sunday School teacher, Don Ray Thomason, would come out in the country to pick me up. It was a very nice and friendly place.

A few years later my family moved to Ardmore, OK and the family pretty much stopped going to church. Strangely enough, I was the only one in my family, for a long time, that went to church. It started when I was ten years old with a Vacation Bible Study. I told my Mother about the church; we visited the church; she checked the place out and decided that the people were OK. At the VBS, I remember one of my favorite things was working on the arts and crafts, wanting to make them as good as I could. But I thought the stories were nice, too. This began my personal journey with God and Christians.
At church, during the sermon, I would listen closely to the words the preacher would say and read along with the Bible. When a verse was given, I would start ahead and read after it. I knew that would give me better understanding of the context of what was being said. I knew from growing up reading The Hardy Boys book series and other books. One has to read the whole story to know what is going on in context. I enjoyed the challenge of learning about what was being preached and taught in the church. So, I was in church almost every Sunday. I went to Sunday School, the service, and when I could, the Sunday and Wednesday evening services, too. If we had evening visitation at the nursing homes I would attend.
To me, this was one of the first things that I did for myself, outside my family. Besides going to school, living in the small town didn't provide a lot of options for activities. So for me, church became my hobby. I actually went there so often that I would show up on Saturday to help mow the lawn. I quickly learned many of the stories and words of the Bible. It wasn't long before I could say the books of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation forward and backward.
This was also the time when I learned to read aloud. It was a skill I was quite proud of. I had received the King James Version of the Bible, so I felt that reading those “odd” words as I was speaking was doing well. It was the only Bible I had honestly ever read. It was odd that it was not written as a paragraph, but in separate verses, one at a time. I actually liked reading the Bible. The stories seemed so odd to me, but it sure was good when a story came up in church that I had already read. As I was familiar with the story, the message was easier to understand. Plus ,it made it better when I reading the verses aloud in my Sunday school class, because I knew what the story was about.
It was, at times, excruciating to hear others my age and even older, struggle with words as they read. Especially the Hebrew names and cities. Of course, I just said them the way I was taught. I had to correct some of the pronunciations, as I learned how to say them when I got older.
Recently, I went back to visit Ardmore, OK and took the pictures of Bethel Baptist Church and reconnected with my first Sunday School teacher. Don Ray Thomason was a very important influence in my life as a young boy. As one that believes in God, he is a good example of someone who tries to live the values he professes. At the time I attended the church, I would often ride with Don Ray as he picked up people for church. He is still doing that Today, however, the church now has two vans so Don Ray doesn't have to use his personal vehicle.
To me it was important to visit them. [Don Ray's wife is Betty Jo, whom I also knew at the time.] They are a good example of living a good life and applying the principles of the life of Jesus, without a strong persecution aspect. I would say that to me, Don Ray and Betty Jo represent the prototypical positive image of what a southern Baptist couple should be. If it was only based upon how someone lived their life, they indeed provided a good example.
However, there is more to life than just a sterling example of behavior. There is the reality of the Universe and the way cause, effect and logical principles apply to life. At this point, many people are more than willing to accept a good life and live blissfully in the limited knowledge of what they have learned. But, that was not the path I chose.
One of my early joys was attending the adult Bible study on Wednesday nights at Bethel Baptist Church. I had my own study guide. In the days proceeding class, I would read and fill in the answers according to the text listed in the study guide. I recall the first one I had was on the book of Acts. Of course, this really is not much of a study of the Bible, as there are often more than one answer that can be derived from the text and your understanding of the text. Until you go to the class, you don't know which one is “right”. But the idea that I was a kid and doing the same study as the grown ups was pretty cool.


This is the interior of the Bethel Baptist Church In Ardmore, OK. With very little exception the sanctuary looks the same it did in 1976 to 1978.

I was like a newly hatched chick in a nest. I just wanted more and more of this stuff. I still didn't really understand why but my adherence to Christianity surely impressed many of the older people in the church. I often received compliments about my attendance and participation. This is also when I was told, strangely enough, “That God has something special for you in your life, Thomas.” This always seemed odd to me for several reasons. First, what could this special thing be. And second, how could this person have an idea like that? How could they possible know? But it was just another of the anomalies that I came across with religion. I smiled and said, “thank you”.

Chapter One; THE NATURAL WORLD part one

The purpose of this book is to examine and understand the purpose of religion in the view of the Theory of Evolution and Natural Selection. It is hoped that you and I will work to explore some of the ideas of God, Religion, and the supernatural in America and the world. I am not going to take the time to explain the detailed biological aspect of Natural Selection. To be quite honest the nuts and bolts of the process from the lab and such are beyond my current knowledge. One thing that makes this book so great is that I use interpretive analysis of the evidence to explain the concepts. There are a great many books and videos available at your local library or bookstore that can give you the background you need on the subject.12 For one of many Internet resources the University of California at Berkley provides a nice primer to begin with.3 One of my favorite, as you will learn in section three, is Cosmos: A Personal Journey.4 Just as with the probability of life must be common enough for it to occur at least one place in the Galaxy or universe, because we are here and alive. Likewise, there must be a reason for religion in human evolution because it is also here in every culture known on Earth.
It may seem like a strange idea for me as an atheist to to try to explain and even justify a reason for religion. I am not sure I will be able to go as far as to justify it but I will try to take a even handed look at its aspects and influences on modern life. I assure you I am far from the first one to do this and I may not be the best one to attempt this subject. I do, however, feel I have a somewhat a unique perspective on this subject as my background has been deeply involved in both science and religion. Without a doubt much more so in religion than science but both still very much self researched and pursued. My purpose in writing this is to help explain in more common terms how and why religion is used and some would say even needed at times by mankind.
Concerning science, I always had a curious nature of how things work. I remember as a young boy of eight or nine years old getting tools and taking apart things like radios, furniture, turntables to see how they worked then putting them back together. I was lucky that even at that age I knew it was a good idea to have the electric cord unplugged or I may not have had the chance to write this Today. I was glad when after putting the item back together it worked as it should. When I was not successful at reassembling something it would cause my mother no end of distress. The question usually was, “Thomas why on Earth would you take [insert item here] apart?” To which my answer would be, “ I wouldn't to see how it worked.”
Part of this curious nature came from my older brothers and I making plastic models as kids. We would go to the local T.G. & Y. discount store and buy all types of models they had, from cars to planes and ships of all sorts. Plus I learned to use the detailing tools with paint and sanding to make the models look their best. Then after spending hours upon hours making the cars look great we would have a “crash and burn” day. That is when we would take the cars and at different levels of destruction watch them come apart. Finally the result would be a glue enhanced fiery crash of two or more cars.
What this means to me is that a lot of attention to detail was a big part of my youth just to have it all go up in smoke for my own enjoyment. Even the smoke held fascination for me. As the plastic burnt it had a black smoke which was different than the smoke of grass burning or cigarettes or other things I had seen burn prior to that. Plus it was easy to capture by simply putting another piece of plastic above the flame and letting the black smoke gather on it. All this lead me to understand that there was a very specific process to be able to make models and to disassemble and reassemble household items.
I also spent hours walking all over the small town of Durant, Oklahoma to see what was around town. I was like a tourist and wanted to see everything that was around me. It was a curious world with the trees, rocks, streets, cars, homes and people all around me at different levels of condition all on the same street and city I was in.
As I remember, some of my most favorite things to do as a young boy was to watch the construction workers on the streets or on a housing site. I would stand by a backhoe and watch them dig deeper or longer and move the dirt out of the hole to the truck or to the side of the hole as it went along. Also I would watch as these men built homes putting up the frames and even walking around inside the wall less house. It is there when I notice that the plumbing fixtures came up through the concrete and the plumbers really didn't spend that much time at the work site. Only in the begging and the end. But it seemed the rest of the workers were there all the construction. So watching these men work provided me an early experience of how cause and effect was in reality. You raise a board, nail it to another board, continue the process soon your have a frame for a wall.
One of the other places that I would find myself at many times is when I heard a fire truck near by I would try to find it to see what was going on. If there was a fire I would watch the fire fighters working. It always fascinated me that they worked so fast but the fire would still destroy the building anyway. The town I lived in was very small so a fire anywhere in town wouldn't take that long to find anyway.
While on one of my walks I came upon a mimosa tree with leaves that were very small and would pull off easily into my hands. The result left the leaves in my thumb and forefinger a conical appearance to them. After pealing off several layers of these leaves I went to wash off the green from the leaves and to my amazement there was a soapy lather as I rub my hands together. I am not sure if this is a natural soap or just a normal reaction to that particular plants being rubbed underwater. I did take it to mean that if I ever needed to wash my hands and there was no soap but one of the mimosa trees I would use that. And I did use that information many times while I was a young boy. Another plant I gained knowledge from was the magnolia tree. They had these trees all over the town and they had peculiar flowers and buds. I found that is I picked the flower and rubbed it with my finger or tore it, very quickly it would turn from the white color to a dark brown. One thing for sure I learned about the magnolia tree id there flowers are very sent filled. I didn't mind playing with the buds of the tree but I didn't so much like the smell afterward, another lesson in cause and effect.
Walking around town looking at the creeks and streams, following them to see where they went and what was in and around them was also a past time I enjoyed. One time with some from friends from my neighborhood, we were at a nearby creek and found a huge turtle. We had found many other smaller ones in the past but this one had to be 14 to 16 inches, head to tail. It wasn't like the little snapper turtles that we normally found. We decided that turtle had to gotten there from a recent rain the day before. That was the only way we could figure out that the huge turtle could make it all the way down to that part of the creek. There very well may have been other ways but this was the conclusion we reached. Even at the age of eight my mind was piecing together cause and effects of the natural world. I know that things had to make sense naturally.




This small creek, a clear running stream in Durant, OK, is the same location where I spent time as a child with friends gathering crawdads, other small animals and exploring the natural world.

At this age most little boys want to have a place for themselves, a “fort, tree house” or “club” if you will. But what does a little boy know about construction? I knew that the walls had to be strong enough to support the roof. I had observed a lot of construction but doing is quite another thing. I also knew that if you didn't have enough wood to make it high enough to stand up in you can dig down into the ground to give yourself more headroom. Kevin Winguard, a friend of mine and I built a clubhouse secure enough to stand on its own and walk inside upright. We made the walls, roof and floor ourselves. We even ran a power cord out to it so we could have light and play music on my record player. Not only would it hold us, but my two brothers were actually was surprised how deep it was inside when they came in.



When I was eight or nine years old I lived at this house in Durant, OK. This backyard is where I built one of my many “forts” with my friend Kevin Winguard.

What Kevin and I had done was to put posts or boards into holes we dug into the ground to make sure it was high enough for us to stand in, yet deep enough to hold the weight. The walls were stepped and arranged in a circle and the opening was stepped down into the ground to get in and out easier. This clubhouse last for about six months.
What I have learned from this and other experiences like this is that when I see artifacts of man from the past. I see not only the history of man but my own history as a youth. When I used the tools and items around me to make something greater then what was there to begin with. Each step man has taken in progress is still with us today because we are the same men and woman of that time. We have just learned to build upon the work of other great inventors and ingenious people from before.

1 http://richarddawkins.net/
2 http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/
3 http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/evo_01
4 http://www.carlsagan.com/