Economy?

Ah, so I've been feeling a little down lately, and I think a lot of it has to do with where our economy is fated to go with the way naive, inexperienced, and completely idiotic politicians are destroying it.

I heard good news regarding one of the jobs I applied for, but it is certainly no guarantee as of yet. It would be a federal job, but that's not quite as comforting as it could be.

If there were one way those in charge were completely screwing up, I might feel a little better. Since there are many, I am a little afraid for the future of our country.

The first, and, in my opinion, most obvious mistake is the printing of 1 trillion dollars. Yes, you may think that might not be a big deal, but before the printing of these bills there were only 900 billion US dollars in circulation. Half of that is sitting in foreign banks for tourists or businesses to have available if they want to exchange money. This leaves, effectively 450 billion dollars actually in circulation in the U.S. where it has an effect on the value of the dollar and American goods. Now, no one can tell me that throwing in an additional amount of money that is twice that amount will not cause extreme inflation of a kind we may have never seen before in this country. It makes me think of stories I heard of Russia after the Soviet Union collapsed, when people literally had to pay thousands of rupees in order to buy basic goods such as milk and bread, and thus many, children and adults all, went hungry. They still have far from recovered from this extreme inflation. Maids in hotels are forced to sell their bodies, giving most of the profit to their pimps, in order to scrape by with enough for shelter and food. This should never have to be the case. This is my number one fear. That in only a few years time the value of our money will be so minuscule that businesses fail and children go hungry. And we will have to blame a naive, badly educated man and his scheming advisers for it.

But no, the mistakes do not stop there. This outrageous spending of money that we do not have, and that may not really exist threatens a great crisis in the near future. For now China still buys our debt. If we keep this up and cannot pay up, why would they continue to do so? There is no reason for them to buy it even as I type this. So when no one buys our debt, and the Chinese demand payment on the interest, what will we do? I fear we will collapse. I cannot actually even begin to imagine what would happen.

I blame the politicians, many of which say math is their least favorite subject, with a laugh, as if managing the budget is not their primary task.

Oh but I can't stop there. Then we have this idiotic "cash for clunkers" program, which will give a 4,500 credit to irresponsible citizens who purchased vehicles which get 18 mpg or less on the highway to upgrade by 2 mpg. We responsible, forward-thinking citizens who purchased fuel efficient vehicles are going to pay for it. The funniest thing, is that it only supplements the value of the car you turned in. Thus if your car is worth 4,500, you just get that total, and not an additional 4,500. If your car is worth 3000, they will supplement with 1,500. But still, they will pay this money for a measly 2 mpg. How absurdly ineffective.

And sadly, the tea party rallies are next on the 4th of July, and I fear they will not be as big as before. Independence Day should be spent celebrating the family, our freedom, and this country, and while I feel we need to fight to keep us strong, I think I will be spending time with my family instead of going to a rally. I fear I will not be the only one. If you add that to our biased, idiotic media, who managed to downplay the tea parties where hundreds of thousands of Americans turned out on April 15 as almost nothing and totally insignificant, I fear our cause will be hard to fight.

An then, we have this health care reform. The health care reform that encourages doctors to reduce the number of tests they order and referrals they give in order to keep from having an additional 5% of the salaries taken from them. How will this help sick people? Huh? This is supposed to be better? This is the country where people from Europe and Canada come in order to get routine procedures done in days instead of months. Why would anyone think it smart to take that away? 75% of Americans are happy with their health care! Why is that not amazing, considering how unpleasant it is to be sick?

I wish I could post more positively, but I find I do not feel very positive right now. I am sincerely worried for the future of this country. I hope we can act against these horrible ideas before it's too late, but I'm pretty certain it already is.

Roots of Christianity: Egyptian Mythology

OK so I went and finished up college and all, and I have a temporary job on campus until my lease here is up, so I'm pretty set and I realized I have no good excuse not to be posting at least weekly. So here goes with the first of a series.

The idea of this series is to show how completely unoriginal some of the biggest ideas of Christianity really are. The intent is to completely weaken some of the main principles of the religion, since, if they aren't original, why are they "truths", and please tell me why anyone should believe they REALLY happened?

I would like to start with Egyptian mythology, partly because I've already researched it, but mostly because the Jews lived in Egypt for a long time, so it is only understandable that they would pick up some or most of the tenants of the extremely unstructured Egyptian Mythology. In fact, I found seven links that occurred in the Egyptian religion far before Christianity came about, and explain some of the religious beliefs or practices of various sects of Christianity. (Some people call them denominations, but I call them sects.)



Link 1: Names of the Gods
This seems to be a rather trivial thing in my opinion, since there are really relatively few names in the world, but I think it is important to say that many of the Hebrew gods shared names with the Egyptian gods. And yes, Hebrew gods. Adon-Ra, which was the King of the Egyptian Gods, is very similar to the Hebrew word for Lord. Chem or Ham was actually the God of the Nile River Valley - or one of Noah's sons. Nissi is the Egyptian name for Mt. Sinai, the location where Osiris, the god of the afterlife was born and also the location where Noah named the Jewish God, Johova-Nissi. Coincidinque? I think not.

Link 2: The Two Natures of Osiris
Osiris was part god and part man (sound familiar?). He was killed by a hippo and his limbs scattered into the 4 winds. Isis, his wife, collected these pieces and put Osiris together again (I know, sounds like Humpty Dumpty). Osiris came back to life, but not on earth. Once a year Egyptians joined their priests on a melancholy procession through the city to mourn his death and celebrate his rebirth. If you never celebrated Good Friday & Easter as a Catholic, you probably wouldn't know that they actually have a melancholy procession through the city (church grounds usually now), and mourn his death and celebrate his rebirth.

Link 3: The Holy Trinity
Seems weird that something like this wouldn't be original, doesn't it? I mean, who can really explain how something can be three separate things and yet one? But the idea of a trinity? That is pretty much Egyptian. Egyptian gods were grouped in threes, and each city had their own special trinity (with some overlap). Thebes, for instance, had Amon-Ra, Athor, and Chonso - A father, mother, and son. Sometimes it was also arranged as father, son, and mother, with the son in the middle of the two parents. For Memphis, the trinity was made up of Isis, Nepththys, and Homsor (Also known as Isis Nephthys Osiris or Isis Osiris and Horus). This trinity was often declared as only being one god, rather than three, even as early as the 8th century BC. Hey, that's before the christian trinity!

Link 4: The Snake
I do not really know how much this one matters, but the snake was evil in Egyptian mythology too. Often a goddess was portrayed as conquering the evil snake. Hey - sounds like Mary!

Link 5: Luke 1, 2
These passages deal with the Annunciation, Conception, Birth, and Adoration of the Child. If you've never read them before, just read Luke 1:26-39, and Luke 2: 4-21 and you will get the important stuff (there's a lot of rambling in the Bible).

Well, similar stories were also associated with the birth of Egyptian Kings. Here's the story: Thoth, the messenger of the gods, tells the maiden queen that she will give birth to a son who is to be King _insert name here_. Then the god Kneph, the spirit, and the goddess Athor both take hold of the queen's hands and put into her mouth the character of life - which is the life of the coming child. The child is born and attending nurses then hold up the baby over which they write his name as declared by Thoth. He holds his finger to his mouth to mark his infancy, since he cannot yet speak. Then several gods and priests attend in adoration upon their knees to present gifts to the child.

I'm sorry, but that much similarity cannot possibly be a coincidence. The conception and birth of Jesus is an exact copy of the conception and birth of Egyptian Pharaohs, whose mothers were ALWAYS "virgins". The Egyptians even considered their kings to be the son of Ra - the King of the Gods - and sometimes the third part of the trinity. The newborn king does not owe his birth to the father from whom he inherited his crown, rather was born by a miraculous conception. His mother was often styled as the wife of Ra.

The other miraculous conception in Egyptian mythology (this makes me snicker), is that of Apis of Memphis - the holy bull - who was also born not of an earthly father, rather engendered with divine influence. The cow, it's mother and a virgin, never had a second calf.

Link 6: Atonement for Sins
One of the most common sculptures on the walls and columns of the temples is that of the King presenting his gift to the gods as atonement for his own sins as well as those of the people. The Kings were viewed as mediators between their people and the gods. In fact, ancient Egyptians worshiped in fear instead of gratitude a majority of the time. Their prayers and sacrifices were sin-offerings rather than thank-offerings.

This sounds so familiar that I cannot possibly believe that this principle did not provide the foundation for how Christianity approaches sins. It even explains why Jesus would die for his people's sins (and where the hell that bizarre story came from). Maybe it doesn't explain how Jesus dying atoned for sins (I really don't get it), but I can only assume that made sense to Egyptians at the time, or that it came from some strange cultural point of view.

Link 7: Priestly Practices
Celibacy in ancient Egyptian society probably always existed for some of the priestly class, but it was not considered a religious virtue until later. A certain select group of priests and priestesses lived their entire lives confined within the temple and probably never married.

Also, some priests practiced self-torture, something practiced by certain sects of Christianity, such as Opus Dei. Some of these practices included gashing their bodies with knives in order to show grief for their sins and unworthiness.

Also copied into Judaism is the crown of the high priest. It is similar to the crown of the kings of unified Egypt, the combination of the two crowns of Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt: A combination of cloth and gold.


So, some people would argue that these similarities indicate that the fundamentals of Christianity must be in the right place, since they are older than Christianity itself. I offer that perhaps it is more an indication that religion is merely a cultural phenomenon, evolving over time based on influences and events, and that it has nothing to do with what is true at all.

Makes more sense to me.

Where've I been?

Have to finish my thesis in the next couple of weeks, but after that, since the economy sucks and architecture probably won't recover for a couple of years, I'll have a ton of free time! I'll be back then.

The Dangers of the Anti-Vaccination Movement

Unfortunately, many prominent actors/actresses and people have been promoting a movement which could endanger future generations.  The anti-vaccination movement is a threat to us all and founded on untruths. 

Vaccines are so incredibly important, and have managed to completed eradicate diseases such as smallpox (which killed 1 in every 7 children in Europe), and almost completely eradicate Polio.  Additionally, the introduction of the meningitis vaccine in 1988 saves almost 33,000 lives and avoids 14 million infections for children born in a given year.   The vaccines have a proven effect.

However; critics claim the following:

• Many diseases that were caused by overcrowding, poor hygiene, poor sanitation, and restricted diet were reduced because of changes in conditions.
• Survivors of disease would become immune, and preventing these immunities is a risk to future generations and only a temporary cure.
• This brings an even greater risk to older or sick people because they are not immune.
• Side-effects, such as autism, make vaccines not worth it. 

The problem with these claims is that they are simply not true.  Vaccines have been proven to be effective, especially when vaccination use stops in certain areas and disease reemerges.  The immunity is a null point, since if everyone is vaccinated then they cannot get sick with these diseases, and the side-effects that are definitely caused by the vaccine are extremely rare and usually do to an allergic response, and other side-effects anti-vaccinations claim, such as autism, have no scientific proof of correclating to vaccines.

The extreme danger of these promotions became evident during several epidemics in areas where vaccine use declined.

• In Stockholm from 1873-1874, campaigns against smallpox vaccine caused a reduction in vaccine use from 90% in other areas of Sweden to only 40% in Stockholm, triggering a smallpox epidemic which changed peoples minds, but only after lots of people died.
• A DPT scare in UK because of prominent figures misinforming the public about reactions to the vaccine reduced use from 81% to 31%.  An epidemic followed which led to the deaths of many children.
• Recent Measles outbreaks, such as those in Indiana in 2005, and in the UK and Ireland in 2000, stemmed from fears that the vaccines cause autism and other serious problems in children.  In Northern Ireland the vaccination rates reduced to as low as 60%.

The supposed safety hazards to children include the weakening of the child's immune system due to too many vaccines, fears that the chemical Thiomersal causes autism, and claims that the MMR vaccine might cause autism.  None of these claims has been proven to be true in numerous scientific studies, and recent trials have denied parents of autistic children compensation for injuries on the grounds of lack of evidence.

However, this fear of side-effects is not the only reason people choose not to get vaccinated, or not to have their children vaccinated.  Some people cite individual liberty, or that they can't be forced into using vaccines.  Others claim that vaccines are against their religion, since it is an attempt to thwart god's will.  Some people believe that vaccines are simply a way to make money off of people.  But scarier, is that according to a 1995 survey, 1/3 of U.S. chiropracters don't even believe that vaccines work, and convince clients not to take them.   All of this has made it very expensive for pharmaceutical companies, none of which actually make profits off of vaccines, since their court costs far outweigh any profit they would make.   Some companies have even pulled out of the vaccine business because of this. 

The anti-vaccine movement is led by bad scientists, bad thinkers, and parents looking for someone to blame for things that just happen sometimes.   Unfortunately, we cannot be complacent about this, since it could threaten our children, or the health of future generations. 

My Religious History

I figured the question of my religious history will have to be answered at some point, so why not start now?

I was raised Catholic.  Up until I was about 12, I went to mass every Sunday and every religious holiday without fail.  I was so devoutly religious as a child, that I believed a Sunday school teacher who said that Mary had visited her once, prayed to be the next "virgin mother," and was extremely disgusted with my brother when he decided that he was atheist (I was 8 at the time, he was 12). 

So what changed?

Well, my family was extremely scientific anyway, and my parents raised me to think.  My mother has a PhD in Differential Equations, and my dad has a PhD in Statistical Forestry.  We talked about everything, and I learned a lot about how to interact with other people and various other things from advice they gave my brother at the dinner table, well before I ever encountered the necessity for knowing. 

So when I entered 8th grade world history, and we started at THE VERY BEGINNING -4.4 billion years ago -, I started to wonder why the bible didn't begin that way too.  This was just a beginning, though, because I did not really reach that moment where things changed until my 9th grade biology class, where the facts of evolution paired with this history sort of started to scream at me. 

It was essentially really close to that moment where I learned Santa Claus wasn't real.  Just because one of them wasn't real, meant that all the rest like the easter bunny, the tooth fairy, etc., also weren't real.  So when I learned that the beginning of the bible was completely false, I began to wonder about the credibility of the rest of the book.  A little research and some thinking, and it became completely evident that the book wasn't absolutely true, and thus, believing in the being it proclaimed to be real did not really make any sense. 

I pretty much still did a lot of research on the topic and paid attention to news, but it wasn't until the shooting here at Virginia Tech where I decided I needed to really thoroughly examine my views.  I was stunned and worthless as a person for a couple months afterwards, but once I got past that stage of my life I started to develop my knowledge and interest in secularism, humanism, and freethought, and so here I am, president of the Freethinkers at Virginia Tech, and writing a blog. 

How Can I be a Conservative Atheist?

You may be feeling a little confused about the title of my blog (Maybe even as confused a G.W. Bush here).  How the hell does someone be an atheist and a conservative AT THE SAME TIME!?!??!  Well, that is an excellent question!  To explain it, I will define atheism and conservatism respectively. 

Atheist is literally a - theism, meaning anti-theism, or the lack of belief in a god.  This may seem relatively self-explanatory, but it really isn't.  We typically categorize atheim into two types. These are big A atheism and little a atheism.  Big A atheism asserts:

• that atheism is 100% correct
• the world would be better if everyone agreed with that
• atheists should actively attempt to deconvert people, for the greater good of the world

 Little a atheism is the lighter version, and consists of the following basic ideas:

•  acknowledgement that they may not be correct, but are still assertive in their opinion that there is no god (without this assertion they would be agnostic)
• while other religions are wrong they are not necessarily a bad thing
• no active deconversion movement is necessary

I would categorize myself as a little a atheist.  While I do not think an active deconversion movement is useful, since people who would become real atheists or agnostics must reach that conclusion by serious contemplation and though, I think that it is extremely important that an active skeptic community be around in order to help people who have reached that level of thought but have nowhere to turn to.  I will explain this more thoroughly in later posts, but I do not want to stray too far from the present topic. 

Now, conservatism is not what most Americans seem to attribute it to be.  When I claim that I am a conservative, I mean entirely by the standards of government size.  Conservatism has more to do with the size of government than religious views.  Religious views are simply a tool for politicians to attract people who do not necessarily think deeply enough into the workings of government to understand real conservatism.  

I do not believe that socialism or collectivist systems have been show to be effective economically or for quality of life.  This includes government health care, which has been shown to be less effective than the current (although flawed) American health care system, because of (among other reasons) longer waiting times, fewer cancer survivors, and less comprehensive options for treatment.  Since the red scare, the word "socialist" has been a bad word.  I'm not sure I really agree with that.  Though the Obama Administration and Democrat-run congress pretend that their policies are not socialist because of this fear (The government is nationalizing companies among other things - that's socialism), they really are.   There are also lots of other bad ideas or fears that came out of the red scare which I will also discuss in detail at a later point in time. 

So I hope I described well enough exactly how I can be a conservative atheist.  I know most people I encounter in my life seem to be quite shocked by this, but these are my views and I will not pretend to be anyone else. 

I think that it is really important that people understand that just because they belong to a specific group of people does not mean that they have to agree with all of those people on all topics (or even most topics), or even that they need to be part of a certain political party.    Just because you are black does not mean you have to be a democrat.  Just because you are religious does not mean you have to be a republican.  I encourage people to choose a party based on, not specific elements of their platforms, but rather the general goal of the party which leads to those specific elements.

Also, since this is my first post, I want to emphasize that all posts on this blog are entirely my opinion, and that I acknowledge that I may be wrong and hope that people will correct me in those cases.  I hope you enjoy the read!