Belief in God Drops

The percentage of Americans who say they believe in God has dipped to the lowest number in the past nearly 80 years, according to a new Gallup poll published Friday.

The Values and Belief poll, conducted from May 2 to 22, showed 81% of people answered that they believe in God. That is down six percentage points from the 87% of respondents who said they believed in God in the 2017 poll. This year is the lowest percentage in Gallup’s trend since the public opinion polling company first asked the question in 1944.

This year’s poll found 17% of Americans said they do not believe in God.

When asking the question first in 1944, again in 1947, and twice each in the 1950s and 1960s, a consistent 98% of respondents said they believed in God. When Gallup asked the question nearly five decades later, in 2011, 92% of Americans said they believed in God.

A subsequent survey in 2013 found belief in God dipping below 90% to 87%, roughly where it stood in three subsequent updates between 2014 and 2017 before this year's drop to 81%.

The poll found that the belief in God has plummeted the most in recent years among young adults and people on the left of the political spectrum, namely liberals and Democrats.  READ MORE...

Science Behind Religion

This story is adapted from How God Works: The Science Behind the Benefits of Religion, by David DeSteno.

EVEN THOUGH I was raised Catholic, for most of my adult life, I didn’t pay religion much heed. Like many scientists, I assumed it was built on opinion, conjecture, or even hope, and therefore irrelevant to my work. That work is running a psychology lab focused on finding ways to improve the human condition, using the tools of science to develop techniques that can help people meet the challenges life throws at them. 

But in the 20 years since I began this work, I’ve realized that much of what psychologists and neuroscientists are finding about how to change people’s beliefs, feelings, and behaviors—how to support them when they grieve, how to help them be more ethical, how to let them find connection and happiness—echoes ideas and techniques that religions have been using for thousands of years.

David DeSteno is a professor of psychology at Northeastern University and author of How God Works: The Science Behind the Benefits of Religion.

Science and religion have often been at odds. But if we remove the theology—views about the nature of God, the creation of the universe, and the like—from the day-to-day practice of religious faith, the animosity in the debate evaporates. What we’re left with is a series of rituals, customs, and sentiments that are themselves the results of experiments of sorts.

 Over thousands of years, these experiments, carried out in the messy thick of life as opposed to sterile labs, have led to the design of what we might call spiritual technologies—tools and processes meant to sooth, move, convince, or otherwise tweak the mind. And studying these technologies has revealed that certain parts of religious practices, even when removed from a spiritual context, are able to influence people’s minds in the measurable ways psychologists often seek.

My lab has found, for example, that having people practice Buddhist meditation for a short time makes them kinder. After only eight weeks of study with a Buddhist lama, 50 percent of those who we randomly assigned to meditate daily spontaneously helped a stranger in pain. Only 16 percent of those who didn’t meditate did the same. (In reality, the stranger was an actor we hired to use crutches and wear a removable foot cast while trying to find a seat in a crowded room.) 

Compassion wasn’t limited to strangers, though; it also applied to enemies. Another study showed that after three weeks of meditation, most people refrained from seeking revenge on someone who insulted them, unlike most of those who did not meditate. Once my team observed these profound impacts, we began looking for other linkages between our previous research and existing religious rituals.


Gratitude, for instance, is something we had studied closely, and a key element of many religious practices. Christians often say grace before a meal; Jews give thanks to God with the Modeh Ani prayer every day upon awakening. When we studied the act of giving thanks, even in a secular context, we found it made people more virtuous. 

In a study where people could get more money by lying about the results of a coin flip, the majority (53 percent) cheated. But that figure dropped dramatically for people who we first asked to count their blessings. Of these, only 27 percent chose to lie. We’ve also found that when feeling gratitude to a person, to fate, or to God, people become more helpful, more generous, and even more patient.  READ MORE

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The God of Spinoza

Did you know that when Einstein gave lectures at the numerous US universities he was invited to, the recurring question that students asked him was:

Do you believe in God?
And he always answered:
I believe in the God of Spinoza.

The ones who hadn't read Spinoza didn't understand...

Baruch de Spinoza was a Dutch philosopher considered one of the three great rationalists of 17th-century philosophy, along with René Descartes in France, and Gottfried Leibniz in Germany.

Here's some of his wisdom:
God would have said:

Stop praying and punching yourself in the chest!

What I want you to do is go out into the world and enjoy your life. I want you to enjoy, sing, have fun and enjoy everything I've made for you.

Stop going to those dark, cold temples that you built yourself and say they are my house! My house is in the mountains, in the woods, rivers, lakes, beaches. That's where I live and there I express my love for you.

Stop blaming me for your miserable life; I never told you there was anything wrong with you or that you were a sinner, or that your sexuality was a bad thing!

Sex is a gift I have given you and with which you can express your love, your ecstasy, your joy. 

So don't blame me for everything they made you believe.

Stop reading alleged sacred scriptures that have nothing to do with me. If you can't read me in a sunrise, in a landscape, in the look of your friends, in your son's eyes... you will find me in no book! 

Trust me and stop asking me. 

Would you tell me how to do my job?

Stop being so scared of me. I do not judge you or criticize you, nor get angry, or seek to punish you. I am pure love.

Stop asking for forgiveness, there's nothing to forgive. 

If I made you... I filled you with passions, limitations, pleasures, feelings, needs, inconsistencies... free will. 

How can I blame you if you respond to something I put in you? 

How can I punish you for being the way you are, if I'm the one who made you? 

Do you think I could create a place to burn all my children who behave badly for the rest of eternity? 

What kind of God would do that?

Forget any kind of commandments, any kind of laws; those are wiles to manipulate you, to control you, that only create guilt in you.

Respect your peers and don't do what you don't want for yourself. All I ask is that you pay attention in your life, that your consciousness is your guide.

My beloved, this life is not a test, not a step, not a rehearsal, nor a prelude to paradise. This life is the only thing that exists here and now, and it is all you need.

I have set you absolutely free, no prizes or punishments, no sins or virtues... no one carries a marker, no one keeps a record.

You are absolutely free to create in your life heaven or hell.

I could tell you if there's anything after this life, but I won't... but I can give you a tip. Live as if there is nothing after... as if this is your only chance to enjoy, to love, to exist.

So, if there's nothing, then you will have enjoyed the opportunity I gave you. And if there is, rest assured that I won't ask if you behaved right or wrong, I'll ask. Did you like it? Did you have fun? What did you enjoy the most? What did you learn?...

Stop believing in me; believing is assuming, guessing, imagining. I don't want you to believe in me... 

I want you to feel me in you when you kiss your beloved, when you tuck in your little girl, when you caress your dog, when you bathe in the sea.

Stop praising me, what kind of egomaniac God do you think I am?

I'm bored being praised, I'm tired of being thanked. Feeling grateful? 

Prove it by taking care of yourself, your health, your relationships, the world. Express your joy!... that's the way to praise me.

Stop complicating things and repeating as a parakeet what you've been taught about me.

The only thing for sure is that you are here, that you are alive, and that this world is full of wonders.

What do you need more miracles for? Why so many explanations?

Look for me outside... you won't find me. Find me inside... there I am beating within you.

Spinoza.

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Religion and Brains

Religion and neurology often seem at odds; an extension of the questionable chasm separating spirituality and science. Indeed, in attempting to explain religious faith, neuroscientists have often sought to highlight subtle differences in brain structure that might confirm a deficiency here or reduction there.

A new, preregistered study out of the Netherlands, published in the European Journal of Neuroscience, sought to test prominent hypotheses in the literature relating brain structure to religious experience by way of a high-powered (i.e., having a large sample size), methodologically robust study on religiosity and structural brain differences.

The need for this, according to the authors, stems from myriad methodological inconsistencies in previous research, including small sample sizes, improperly validated testing tasks, and conceptual confusion regarding the structures being measured.

Thus, while the authors readily admit that brain connectivity measures may provide a more nuanced and accurate picture of the brain-religion relation, their primary aim was to “establish the (absence of the) relation between religiosity and structural brain differences at a level of methodological and statistical rigor that we hope will set a new standard for future studies.”

In other words: to dispel notions of the most basic and simplistic relations between brain structure and religious experience, paving the way for more sophisticated approaches.

Three theories were put to test.  TO READ MORE, CLICK HERE...

Time's Mistress

 Age had time

as its mistress,

lingering not

in the past

or the present,

but with speed

towards the end.

10 May 2021

It appears to the layman that life is bound up in layers of confusion that seldom gets sorted out until the end of life approaches and/or the mind becomes so incapacitated that we simply have no idea what it going on...  Both of these possibilities happen but there are a lot of other possibilities as well most of which deal with coming to grips with the reality of life in that life does not happen as a result of the choices that we make but happens because it has been willed to happen that way long before we were given our first breath of life.

Are we then looking at a religious awareness or understanding in our later years?

No...  not at all...  and while religion is not at the heart of life like many religious followers perceive it to be, there is a CREATOR and there is no doubt in my mind that this is a fact; however, all our other religious beliefs and concepts were given to us by extraterrestrials who visited earth in the early years of our existence...   and, who altered our DNA to the point that human beings became the creatures that they are today rather than moving in another direction that might have kept us in the same realm as apes or monkeys who share similar DNA structures.

Our lives...  we thought and/or perceived, were created so that we could worship the Gad who had given us life.  and, while there is some truth to that belief, our lives were really created for us to learn to survive and not just survive with other human beings but with land animal, water animal, air animals as well as the environment.

Our arrogance has taken us into a different direction and that direction will take us into space and once in space, we will eventually meet the extraterrestrials who were responsible for giving us life...  and perhaps our CREATOR as well.

To this end, our lives have been pre-determined that is to say that if one exists on the edge of the universe and has the ability to look back or down or across at earth, they will see that spacetime on earth moves faster than the spacetime where they are located moves.  Knowing that relationship and dynamic, those who dwell at the edge of the universe can see our future happening before we experience it

Since they know what our future is going to be like, then they can make adjustments should they desire in certain events in an effort to alter or change that future and then can witness the new realities unfold just like the old realities unfolded.

After many years traveling through space and coming into contact with different knowledge, we too will one day have their same level of awareness and can evoke our wills onto other civilizations just as they have done to us...  and, no doubt that is our future.

Light from the sun takes 8 minutes to get to earth...  so past light illuminates our present, allowing the past and the present to happen at the same time which logically should not happen at all.  And, the only way that it it happening is when we compare the light from the sun relative to its arrival on earth...  knowing that it is traveling at the speed of light.

Similarly, our future relative to whoever is living at the edge of the universe is their present which logically should not happen either, but it does which is why they can see our future before it happens to us relative to our present.

Only a CREATOR can create a universe where these kinds of things are happening on a regular basis...  we are not the byproduct of evolution although human being have experience evolutionary changes in their bodies...  And, these changes happened faster than they should have happened which leads us to believe that someone altered our DNA.

SO...  does death as we understand it...  really happen?

Russian Cosmism

Russian cosmism is a philosophical and cultural movement that emerged in Russia at the turn of the 19th century, and again, at the beginning of the 20th century. At the beginning of the 20th century, there was a burst of scientific investigation into interplanetary travel, largely driven by fiction writers such as Jules Verne and Herbert Wells as well as philosophical movements like the Russian cosmism.

Cosmism entailed a broad theory of natural philosophy, combining elements of religion and ethics with a history and philosophy of the origin, evolution, and future existence of the cosmos and humankind. It combined elements from both Eastern and Western philosophic traditions as well as from the Russian Orthodox Church.

Cosmism was one of the influences on Proletkult, and after the October Revolution, the term came to be applied to "...the poetry of such writers as Mikhail Gerasimov and Vladimir Kirillov...: emotional paeans to physical labor, machines, and the collective of industrial workers ... organized around the image of the universal 'Proletarian', who strides forth from the earth to conquer planets and stars."  This form of cosmism, along with the writings of Nikolai Fyodorov, was a strong influence on Andrei Platonov.

Many ideas of the Russian cosmists were later developed by those in the transhumanist movement.  Victor Skumin argues that the Culture of Health will play an important role in the creation of a human spiritual society into the Solar System.

The Culture of Health is the basic science about Spiritual Humanity. It studies the perspectives of harmonious development of "Spiritual man" and "Spiritual ethnos" as a conscious creator of the State of Light into the territory of the Solar System" (by Skumin).

Free Will and Choices

There is a common belief among mankind whether it be from man or from woman and whether you believe in a Creator or not that ALL OF US WERE born with a certain amount of FREE WILL and that this WILL is used on a daily basis to make our CHOICES and it is these CHOICES that determine the direction into which our lives will proceed and it is these CHOICES that determine or predetermine most if not all of our future outcomes.

There is no denial that we make choices and/or that for some of us, our choices are made for us whether these decisions come from our parents, our teachers, our leaders, our bosses, and/or our spouses.  And that these choices do influence in some degree our future outcome and life's directions.  HOWEVER, the concept of free will is a different matter altogether in that free will means the following:  the power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate; the ability to act at one's own discretion.

Consequently, free will has nothing to do with any religious beliefs as it is simply an act of bring born into the world of mankind...  and, we all know that giving birth results from the sexual union of a man and a female...  and, we can make the assumption that this union has nothing to do with the will of a Creator or any such other religious nonsense...  especially since giving birth is as natural as breathing air...  and, we can assume that the properties of our physical body have nothing to do with a Creator either as they are simply the result of millions of years of mutated evolution.

As was evidenced by Jesus and his sayings as recorded in THE BIBLE, if he had FREE WILL then Jesus would not have needed to obey the will of GOD...  but, the will of GOD is necessary and the foundation of most all religion.

So...  therein lies our problem.

NOW...  let's look at the concept of time and the scientific fact that time has a past, present, and a future even though we can neither see our past or our future, yet we know as sure as we are breathing that it is there.

We also know from our space program that astronauts age less in space than they do on earth.  Using this knowledge as a foundation, we can now make the assumption that when we send astronauts further and further out into space and we keep a record of their time relative to earth that their present would be our future.  It is also possible that if these astronauts were the same age as those monitoring their progress that the monitors could die of old age before those astronauts return and still have almost half their lives to live.

Now, let's return to creation and see if it was a Creator that brought it about or some scientific anomaly.  Science believes that our universe was created by the bursting forth and expansion of a black hole.  By definition, a black hole is a compression of matter...  so, what comes out is that which was first inside since a black hole cannot exist with nothing inside.

Yet, science cannot explain where all the stuff that was expelled from that black hole came from...  and so, we must turn to a Creator for the only logical explanation which is a prime example of OCCUM'S RAZOR which states:  Occam's razor is the principle that, of two explanations that account for all the facts, the simpler one is more likely to be correct. It is applied to a wide range of disciplines, including religion, physics, and medicine.

With this new concept in mind, we can easily explain the notion that if our Creator wanted to, He could see our past, present, and future and if it was His Will He could decide our choices for us by changing facets of our past which would cause us to make different choices in our present, thereby nullifying the fact that we had any free will at all.

Prayer, Answering, & Miracles

Throughout my entire life so far (and I am 73 years old) I have believed that prayer was being used to communicate with God, Allah, or some kind of Superior Entity that had God-like qualities.  I have also believed that MIRACLES have and will continue to take place on earth, but I am not sure that it is the result of prayer or because of some other reason(s).

WHY...  do I think like this?

Well...  

1. how come some prayers are answered while other prayers are not answered?
2. how come some miracles are performed while other miracles do not happen at all?
3. how come miracles happen to those who believe as well as to those who do not believe?

There are literally millions of people praying everyday for:

• their own good health
• the good health of others
• the end to conflict and wars
• the cure for disease
• children with terminal illnesses
• a long awaited promotion
• to pass a difficult test
• that their children grow up unharmed
• the recovery from cancer

HOWEVER...

We have been told that when we pray to use THE LORD'S PRAYER and for God's Will to be done on earth as it is in Heaven...

AND YET...

Do we always believe that God's Will is, in fact, being done on earth as it is in Heaven when so many of our prayers are unanswered?

Life Eternal

 If religious people believe in eternal life, then what is the real purpose of life here on earth from some 80-90 years?

The average life expectancy in the US is 78.87 years...  (2019 data)  However, on average people live longer in the UK 81.16 years.

So, if you are a religious person, then you can spend (ON AVERAGE) more time here on earth if you live in the UK than if you live in the US.

That should please religious people...  RIGHT?

If one had to ability to read every single book that was ever written and/or published regardless of language, then one would be able to easily surmise that the purpose of life here on earth is 

SURVIVAL,

and, if this is the case, then religious beliefs are only good for life eternal...

Life eternal makes more sense anyway after the concept of survival is fulfilled because it seems completely ILLOGICAL for mankind to live 80-100 years IF all that happens to them after they die is that they are simply put into the ground or cremated.

It is also highly unlikely that mankind is the only living race of people in our ENTIRE UNIVERSE...  especially since there are over billions of billions of solar systems in our UNIVERSE.  Unless I am mistaken, that's PRETTY DAMN LARGE.

And...  if you are a religious person then you will use your basic instinct of SURVIVAL to live as long as you can on earth so that you can DIE and live for all eternity in a location called HEAVEN...  As illogical as this sounds, it makes better sense than just dying.

FURTHER, in every single Global religion there is a GOD or some form of superior being around which their religion revolves...  this cannot be MERE COINCIDENCE...  the question is whether or not this is God or some form of ANCIENT ALIEN...

The !0 Commandments

 

Taking A Rain Day

It is not often that I have the opportunity to sit on my screen-in back porch in the summer because of the position of the sun and the humidity, but today, it is raining and has been raining ever since I awoke two hours ago.  And, there are no colors in the sky except a solid grey that actually serves as a background to highlight all the red brick homes, green grasses, and green leafed trees.  It is a picturesque sight even though it is a tad dismal to my sight; yet, the sound of raining falling is not just relaxing but it is mesmerizing as well in its persistence and relentless assault upon the ground.

From my vantage point, I see no animals flying or scurrying about except for a few hummingbird who, despite the rain, are enjoying and feasting upon the food we put in hanging containers especially for them and to attract them.  There are about 6 hummingbirds that visit our location each year but we have no way of knowing if it is the sames birds or not...  we'd like to think that it was and that over time they would become familiar with us and let us get closer...  but, that has yet to happen.

It is nice, to say the least, to sit out on the porch admiring and listening to the rain and not listening to FOX NEWS and the terrible "THINGS" that are going on in our country because of the upcoming election and because and because Trump's opposition has hated him from the GETGO.

Interestingly, I was raised a Democrat because both my parents were Democrats but after graduating from Wake Forest University with an MBA, I became a CONSERVATIVE LIBERAL and turned my back on the Democratic Party.  My Business Education, gave me a strong belief in the importance of Business and Economic Growth but my liberal background continued to ground me in the reality that there is a HUGE WEALTH GAP in this country and until that gets solved LABOR and MANAGEMENT will never agree on anything and more importantly they will always be enemies.

Another issue is the idea of EQUALITY...  and, while I also strongly believe that we are all equal in GOD's eyes, I also strongly believe that GOD created us with the thoughts of being UNEQUAL in physical, mental, musical, athletic, and social abilities as well.  And, while that may seem like a contradiction, GOD knew that is mankind is going to grow, WE CANNOT ALL BE EQUAL.

AND, as soon as we realize that inequality, our country and world will become a better place to live...

If you don't agree with me, then why are we all not like Michael Jordan or Michael Jackson or Elvis Presley or Tom Cruise or Tom Hanks or Martin Luther King Jr. or Jack Kennedy or Steven Jobs or Mohammed Ali???

Think about that for more than a minute or two if you will...  and then tell me I am wrong...  These GIFTS were given to these people by GOD....  who also wanted all men to be equal in HIS EYES...

Good Friday

Good Friday is a Christian holiday commemorating the crucifixion of Jesus and his death at Calvary. It is observed during Holy Week as part of the Paschal Triduum on the Friday preceding Easter Sunday, and may coincide with the Jewish observance of Passover. Wikipedia

Why is it called "good"?

"...according to Fiona MacPherson, senior editor at the Oxford English Dictionary, the adjective traditionally "designates a day on (or sometimes a season in) which religious observance is held". The OED states that "good" in this context refers to "a day or season observed as holy by the church", hence the greeting "good tide" at Christmas or on Shrove Tuesday. In addition to Good Friday, there is also a less well-known Good Wednesday, namely the Wednesday before Easter."

Palm Sunday

What is Palm Sunday?

Palm Sunday commemorates the entrance of Jesus into Jerusalem (Matthew 21:1–9), when palm branches were placed in his path, before his arrest on Holy Thursday and his crucifixion on Good Friday. It thus marks the beginning of Holy Week, the final week of Lent.

So, this is a religious event...

A religious event for those who believe but not so much for those who do not believe...

What is belief?

Belief is an acceptance that a statement is true or that something exists.

Simply stated, belief refers to the notion that God exists and that not only did HE create the Universe but that HE created mankind and after HE created mankind HE appeared on earth through the body of Jesus and then allowed HIMSELF to be crucified on a cross to die for the sins of mankind.

The GOD Trinity:  Father...  Son...  Holy Ghost...

These three are one in the same.

The existence of God is a subject of debate in the philosophy of religion and popular culture. A wide variety of arguments for and against the existence of God can be categorized as metaphysical, logical, empirical, or subjective. Wikipedia

The Real Jesus Christ

When I was 10 years old, perhaps 9 years old (after all that's a long damn time ago for me) my parents made me attend Sunday School as well as Church Services with them every Sunday, regardless of the weather and if we had a cold or an upset stomach...  this was their rule even on vacations, except Sunday School was not required.

I stopped doing this only after I graduated from high school or for about 10-12 years...  so, with that amount of exposure to Church and Sunday Sermons, I pretty much remember all the major stories described in the Bible, that ministers typically "preach" about on Sundays...  additionally and probably most importantly, I was given the impression by the ministers that Jesus Christ was indeed Caucasian in his appearance, illustrated by the image on the left side of the image above, when in reality, Jesus should have been portrayed by the right side of the image above.

Why were we not exposed to the TRUTH by these ministers???

Jesus was born in the MIDDLE EAST and as a result should have MIDDLE EASTERN features and yet American ministers wanted to convince us otherwise.

This was the first issue that PISSED ME OFF about institutionalized religions...  but, the other issue that absolutely none of the preachers, ministers, priests, and/or pastors discusses in the pulpit is the fact that Jesus was an extraterrestial...  an alien...

Think about this:

1.  How was Jesus conceived inside Mary's womb???

Certainly not the traditional way...

2.  Jesus made the comment...  "My kingdom is not of this world..."

Not of this world, to me, means not of EARTH...  that's a no-brainer...

3.  Jesus performed miracles...  what other human being has ever done that?  Sure, it was with the help of God, but God for all intents and purposes is another ALIEN as well...

WHAT ELSE IS INSTITUTIONALIZED RELIGIONS HIDING FROM US???