Back by popular demand!

Yes, I’m back. I’m even thinking of reclaiming my real name. We’ll see. I feel like my old self. Like my teacher friend, Jenni, said, “looking forward, not backwards” Or as one of my first “Memes”, from Gumball Ralley. Raul Julia says,

The 1st Rule of Italian Driving…

“Whattsa behind me, (removes rear view mirror) is not important!”

Of course, we didn’t call them memes back then. They were just funny lines from movies & TV shows. I look at my brother and say any setup line from any of those ‘70s movies and he’ll deliver a spot on reading. Consummate professional. God I miss him.

No! He’s not dead. Sorry (in a Canadian soory kind of way) It’s just he’s been up in the Great White Northwest and I’ve been in Libtardia.

There was a long stretch of years, at least two, when him and I and our mom would play Sid Meir’s Civilization on our computers with our modems and such. First III, then IV, and I think even V.

I thought of it as feeling my Irish, because good whiskey didn’t put a damper on my game. Somehow it got me out of the way so I could be, no say what I thought. Because I knew that whatever I said was the truth. Confidence. I miss that too.

I’m not gonna let it end there tonight because obviously I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. I’m one of those guys that asks questions and thinks seriously about them, and what the ramifications might be. Even if I don’t like where they’re headed. If you’ve never considered it, how can you already have an opinion about it?

So I had several thoughts today, that I want to pursue.

I confessed my sins and sincerely accepted Jesus as the Son of God and wanted to be like him.

That was about 40 years ago.

I gotta be honest with you. I’ve never seen him. I’ve only had “feelings, impressions, thoughts” of spiritual experiences.

But there was a time when I was feet first in. It was later, about 30 years ago. That was in Visalia.

I was attending College of the Sequoias. I was on welfare. With my wife and two daughters. We were broke hippies. We were living in a KOA trailer park in Goshen. I’ll put those white trash credentials up against anyone!

Pizza’s here. I may, or may not, write later.

The illusion of free will

I had two paragraphs here at the beginning, but they were “unretrievable” by the app. I like to give context. Maybe too much.

I had read a blog about choosing to heal. I agree with their point, but I’m also opinionated about Free Will. So choosing is a “trigger” word for me. I was driving to New Mexico and dictated the original version.

Now I’m sitting in my hotel room editing and wanted to go ahead and publish.

When I was a teenager, I read about Albert Einstein‘s thought experiments. He came up with his insights about the universe while thinking about the implications of things moving and lights shining. I had read something about free will and it got me thinking what would happen if we could turn back Time like rewinding a movie?

So for a good thought experiment you need a simple premise. Let’s say you’re at an ice cream shop and before you are 30-onederful flavors. Which one will you choose? That doesn’t matter. What does it mean if free will is real? That’s what matters.

It means I could’ve chosen any flavor. I am free to choose. I have agency.

So if I was able to turn back time to just before I chose say Mint Chip, it should be possible for me to choose Butter Pecan this time because the Agency that chooses hasn’t made the choice yet.

But why would I? If everything else is the same, I would make the same choice. So if I’m always going to choose Mint Chip, I’m destined to. I feel like I could choose something different, but it’s always going to be Mint Chip. No choice. No free will.

Also if everything else is just following the same physical laws as everything, including me, So where does this Agency come in with FreeWill? It’s not there. It’s an illusion. It just seems like it, it just appears this way, because of the way our human brains work.

Another nail in the coffin for Free Will is the scientific evidence collected that shows many of your decisions are made, and detectable by others, before you consciously make them. A human brain makes decisions then the conscious mind becomes aware of it.

The implications of the acceptance that FreeWill is an illusion are far-reaching. It would impact many of our social institutions with a new wave of compassion. Everyone does the best they can. Most of the differences between people come down to things beyond their control.

If someone needs help they should get it. The ones with the most money should pay for most of it. That’s humanity.

Prisoners are not getting the punishment they deserve. They are getting much worse. They should be seen as humans that are dangerous to themselves and others. Their lives should be respectfully restricted until we figure out what’s wrong and fix it.

Hello God, where the hell were you?

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I saw a post recently asking the question, “If you could ask God one question, what would it be?” So that got me to thinking…

Since most people in the US belong to some sect of Christianity, they picture their God as they believe Him to exist. They imagine asking Him about some detail about their faith they’ve struggled with in doubt. Or perhaps they’ve got a score to settle and they want to know why their loved one was taken. At least those are common threads.

My question would be something like why did you hide? I looked everywhere, inside and out. I never saw you. I called out many times. You never answered. Science has searched for you for thousands of years. Nothing. Physics hasn’t found Him. Biology hasn’t found a trace of a divine hand guiding evolution.

In fact the opposite has been found. The study of the natural world around us has lead to the scientific consensus that the Universe, Time, and Space began with The Big Bang. Life has evolved on Earth. Thoughts are bio electrical interactions among nerves in a brain. Before science, God was the most logical explanation for why we are here, how we got here, and what the difference is between living things and dead things. Now that we have science, insistence on His existence is just wishful thinking.

So if I were to find myself in the unlikely position of asking God one question it would be, “Where the hell were you?”