I've been emailing a friend about Christianity. In his email he suggested this, "Try actually reading the bible, I’d recommend any book from the Gospel and just take another look, with fresh eyes and see where it takes you."
I did... and this is where it took me:
I chose Mark, because it's supposed to be the oldest of the gospels, written at about 70 AD, according to Wikipedia. I would be lying if I said the fact that it's also the shortest was not a factor. I find it interesting that it was written forty years after the events. It does make me wonder why the author waited so long, and how he would have gathered the information, because it's obviously not possible to remember the exact words of Jesus for forty years.
I can summarize the book quite easily, because it's written simply and contains the same theme throughout:
Most of the book is about Jesus doing four things:
- Healing sick people
- Casting out demons / evil spirits
- Continuously telling people not to tell anyone what he's done, or who he really is.
- Proclaiming the good news or gospel, which was simply the fact that the Kingdom of God would come within the lifetime of some of the people that he was preaching to.
It then ends with Jesus being crucified and raised from the dead. I'm not going to consider Mark 16:9 onwards as part of Mark, because that part was not in the oldest manuscripts, and scholars believe that it was added later. According to Wikipedia, "It was likely composed early in the 2nd century and incorporated into the gospel around the middle of the 2nd century." So I'm only going to comment on the original book. With that said, however, I don't know anything about the author of Mark, so I actually have no reason to trust him or the author of Mark 16:9 onwards. Mark 16:17,18 onwards does say
And these signs will accompany those who believe: In my name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new tongues; 18 they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well.”
Which does sound really far fetched... It's basically saying that Christians are able to drink deadly poison without being hurt at all. So, again,... I'm going to ignore that section.
Back to the summary:
- Jesus heals many sick people.
- Jesus casts out loads of demons.
This is quite an interesting concept. There were obviously loads of demon possessed people in those days. There was one guy who could break chains because of his possession, and another guy who had seizures.
This brings me to the obvious problem of "Where are these demons today?"
If this is all true, then at some point after the second bit of Mark was added, demons still possessed people. (I said I wouldn't use this bit, but it does seem to indicate that demons were still a problem after the second century)
So, where are they? It seems likely that the simpler theory is usually the correct one. The simpler theory is that people in those days believed in demon possession, but instead they were actually just rumours, or epileptic fits. If that's the case, then it would completely destroy the validity of any book in the bible that mentions demon possession.
- Jesus continuously tells people not to talk about him.
I could guess this is because he didn't want to become too famous at the time... needed a bit of breathing space.
- Jesus repeatedly says that the Kingdom of God is about to come within the lifetime of those listening.
So the obvious questions here are: "What is the coming of the Kingdom of God?" and "Did it happen at the time Jesus specified?"
Here are some verses that describe the coming of the Kingdom of God
- Mark 9:1 (It would come within the lifetime of those he was talking to, confirmed again in Luke 9:27, and Matthew 24:34) - And he said to them, “Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see that the kingdom of God has come with power.”
- Mark 9:47 (The Kingdom is something that you can enter - as apposed to hell) And if your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell
- Mark 13:2-8 (Gives the impression that it's going to be catastrophic) - 2 “Do you see all these great buildings?” replied Jesus. “Not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.”
3 As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John and Andrew asked him privately, 4 “Tell us, when will these things happen? And what will be the sign that they are all about to be fulfilled?”
5 Jesus said to them: “Watch out that no one deceives you. 6 Many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am he,’ and will deceive many. 7 When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. 8 Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be earthquakes in various places, and famines. These are the beginning of birth pains.
- Mark 13:17 onwards (Describes a pretty massive event, even referring to heaven and earth passing away) - 17 How dreadful it will be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers! 18 Pray that this will not take place in winter, 19 because those will be days of distress unequaled from the beginning, when God created the world, until now—and never to be equaled again.
20 “If the Lord had not cut short those days, no one would survive. But for the sake of the elect, whom he has chosen, he has shortened them. 21 At that time if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Messiah!’ or, ‘Look, there he is!’ do not believe it. 22 For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect. 23 So be on your guard; I have told you everything ahead of time.
24 “But in those days, following that distress,
“‘the sun will be darkened,
and the moon will not give its light;
25 the stars will fall from the sky,
and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.’[c]
26 “At that time people will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory. 27 And he will send his angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of the heavens.
28 “Now learn this lesson from the fig tree: As soon as its twigs get tender and its leaves come out, you know that summer is near. 29 Even so, when you see these things happening, you know that it[d] is near, right at the door. 30 Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. 31 Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.
The Day and Hour Unknown
32 “But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. 33 Be on guard! Be alert[e]! You do not know when that time will come. 34 It’s like a man going away: He leaves his house and puts his servants in charge, each with their assigned task, and tells the one at the door to keep watch.
35 “Therefore keep watch because you do not know when the owner of the house will come back—whether in the evening, or at midnight, or when the rooster crows, or at dawn. 36 If he comes suddenly, do not let him find you sleeping. 37 What I say to you, I say to everyone: ‘Watch!’”
So, the question on my mind is "Did this happen?" As I understand, this is the event that Christians refer to as "Armageddon", "The end of the world", or the "Second coming". The bible, however, clearly describes this event as something that would happen in the 1st century.
The book obviously has some good points, with Jesus talking about being good, and loving your neighbour, etc., but the nonsense about demon possession and the end of the world completely destroys any kind of validity that the book has. I also find it interesting the Jesus doesn't even mention that people have to believe in him in order to be saved... the rule that many Christians believe to be one of the fundamental principles of Christianity.
Wednesday 24 August 2011
Tuesday 23 August 2011
Statistically, are we mortal?
There's a type of bad statistics that's used whenever you only have only one piece of information... it's called a point estimate.
Here's how it works in this context:
I am currently alive, therefore chances are that I am normally alive.
Of course this is bad statistics, because one needs many samples for statistics to be accurate, something which cannot be done, because we are each only one consciousness / soul / point of experience... whatever you want to call it.
Another way to say this is: I existed after presumably having not existed (before being born), therefore it is probably possible to exist again (in a different form of course).
Another way to do a point estimate like this is, to try and calculate the odds of now being a point in time in which you're alive: e.g. 13 billion years / 70 years = presuming you only exist once, the chance that you're currently alive now is 1 in 185,714,285. That means either you're REALLY lucky, or you don't just exist once.
Thursday 4 August 2011
Free Will is a Myth
Free will is a delusion which is confused with complexity.
Don't believe me? You probably don't, so let me explain:
Imagine humans were much, much simpler. The only thing they could do was push a blue button or a red button. The only thing they knew was that the blue button would give them pleasure and the red button would give them pain.
If the above described everything that a human was, all humans would push the blue button and no humans would push the red button... ever.
Perhaps you're wondering, but wouldn't they push the red button out of curiosity? Since the humans I've described above are extremely simple, then no, they do not have curiosity, so they would not push the red button.
But lets suppose they did have curiosity, an exact amount of curiosity, which would lead a human to push the red button from time to time. Lets also presume that there are ten such humans, all exactly the same, and all placed in exactly the same environment. All of the humans would push exactly the same buttons at the same time.
This is because every single action that a human does is due to a reason. If all humans have the same reasons, then all humans will do exactly the same things.
So, let's add some more complexity to this problem: Pushing the blue button causes someone else to feel pain, and pushing the red button causes someone else to feel pleasure. The buttons have the opposite effect on other people to what they have on the person pushing the button. The humans now have a bit of intelligence, and are also aware of the effect of their buttons.
Now that the humans are able to affect other people, they have the ability to show compassion.
Now what will happen if there are ten identical people in exactly the same environment? Will they each do different things based on their supposed "Free Will"?
The answer is "No". They will do exactly the same thing, because they have exactly the same reason. The reason might be their emotions this time, but because they have exactly the same emotions, they will do exactly the same thing as all the other humans.
Let me put this a different way:
When someone goes to court to be tried for murder, they have a psychological evaluation to see if they might have committed the crime due to a psychological problem. The fact is that ALL murderers have a psychological problem. Unfortunately if we let all murderers go free then there would be a lot more murder going on, so we don't lock people up to take revenge on them; we lock them up to reduce the chance of future murders.
Imagine that you were born as the murderer. You had the same parents, the same body, the same friends, the same experiences, etc... do you think you would have done anything differently to the murderer?
You wouldn't have, because there is no reason for you to do anything different. The murderer had a reason for committing the murder and you would have had the same reason. If you don't believe me, what makes you so special, that you would not have committed the murder?
Perhaps you had a better upbringing, or watched less violent television, or had enough money that you never needed to consider committing a crime.
We are the product of our genetics, our memories, our emotions and our intelligence, not the product of free will.
Don't believe me? You probably don't, so let me explain:
Imagine humans were much, much simpler. The only thing they could do was push a blue button or a red button. The only thing they knew was that the blue button would give them pleasure and the red button would give them pain.
If the above described everything that a human was, all humans would push the blue button and no humans would push the red button... ever.
Perhaps you're wondering, but wouldn't they push the red button out of curiosity? Since the humans I've described above are extremely simple, then no, they do not have curiosity, so they would not push the red button.
But lets suppose they did have curiosity, an exact amount of curiosity, which would lead a human to push the red button from time to time. Lets also presume that there are ten such humans, all exactly the same, and all placed in exactly the same environment. All of the humans would push exactly the same buttons at the same time.
This is because every single action that a human does is due to a reason. If all humans have the same reasons, then all humans will do exactly the same things.
So, let's add some more complexity to this problem: Pushing the blue button causes someone else to feel pain, and pushing the red button causes someone else to feel pleasure. The buttons have the opposite effect on other people to what they have on the person pushing the button. The humans now have a bit of intelligence, and are also aware of the effect of their buttons.
Now that the humans are able to affect other people, they have the ability to show compassion.
Now what will happen if there are ten identical people in exactly the same environment? Will they each do different things based on their supposed "Free Will"?
The answer is "No". They will do exactly the same thing, because they have exactly the same reason. The reason might be their emotions this time, but because they have exactly the same emotions, they will do exactly the same thing as all the other humans.
Let me put this a different way:
When someone goes to court to be tried for murder, they have a psychological evaluation to see if they might have committed the crime due to a psychological problem. The fact is that ALL murderers have a psychological problem. Unfortunately if we let all murderers go free then there would be a lot more murder going on, so we don't lock people up to take revenge on them; we lock them up to reduce the chance of future murders.
Imagine that you were born as the murderer. You had the same parents, the same body, the same friends, the same experiences, etc... do you think you would have done anything differently to the murderer?
You wouldn't have, because there is no reason for you to do anything different. The murderer had a reason for committing the murder and you would have had the same reason. If you don't believe me, what makes you so special, that you would not have committed the murder?
Perhaps you had a better upbringing, or watched less violent television, or had enough money that you never needed to consider committing a crime.
We are the product of our genetics, our memories, our emotions and our intelligence, not the product of free will.
Friday 8 July 2011
Poetic vs logical arguments.
The biggest problem I have when communicating with religious people is the number of poetic words that they tend to use. One can't argue with poetry, because poetry is not supposed to be logical, and it's not supposed to make sense.
Some examples of poetic words are words like "faith", "deserves" and "worthy". While they might seem perfectly logical, one has to try to deconstruct a word into its simplest form, and then one will know whether or not that word really has meaning.
Let me start with "faith".
In the real world, an intelligent person will believe something in the same proportion to the quality of the evidence which they know of. Here is a chart to demonstrate:
The next chart shows the opposite: Irrational thinking, where a person's confidence level is the opposite of the quality of the evidence which they have.
The dictionary definition of faith is: Belief without proof. The less evidence, the more faith is required. Here's the chart.
The next chart demonstrates that intelligent belief + faith = 100% certainty. Faith is when you believe something in spite of the quality of the evidence. It's a stuffing, like the polystyrene chips that one has to dig out of a box to get to the thing which really matters.
You may ask, "What if someone says they have faith in someone's ability to drive?" In that context, the word faith is exactly as I've defined it above. Based on all evidence available there might be a 99.99% chance that they will survive driving from A to B, but if you are 100% confident, you have inflated your confidence by 0.01% above reality.
What I'm writing is not really about faith. It's more to demonstrate that whatever you believe faith is, if it's not this, then it's different to what I believe it is. That means that if you and I have a different understanding of a word, it won't make sense for us to use it in a conversation. We would have to search for words that we both agree on the meaning.
The next two words I want to talk about are "deserves" and "worthy". Unlike faith, these words do have a meaning, but only in a certain context. That context is a made-up rule or law.
If you drop an apple, and it hits the ground, you've proven the fact that gravity makes apples drop to the ground, but you cannot say "an apple deserves to hit the ground", because that implies a made-up rule.
The apple is not worthy of hitting the ground either, because it still implies a made-up rule. You may say that Prince William deserves to be king, or that he is worthy of being a king, which is correct, because the made-up rule might be something like "princes become kings".
The problem with "deserves" and "worthy", is that if you use them to argue a case, you're implying a rule, and it's usually the rule itself that needs to be argued. I may not agree that princes should become kings. Instead I may believe that a better rule would be to have a contest to determine who the next king should be.
A rule also requires a reason. This reason is absolutely essential for a reasonable argument. To say "princes become kings" has no value without a reason. The reason might be something like, because royal families have a lot of power, so they keep the king in the family to be selfish. (I don't know if that's the reason, but I'm just making this up)
The next word I want to talk about is "punishment", which relates nicely to "deserves" and "worthy", because punishment is based on made-up rules that serve a purpose.
The purpose of punishment is typically something like this: To protect the majority of people. It does so because people will see the punishment, which is typically something painful or uncomfortable, causing them to have fear, or it will keep them locked up, so that they're no longer able to harm other people.
So punishment protects a group of people, and works by either through fear, or prevention.
When I ask religious people whether hell is revenge or punishment, they usually don't respond, but those who do respond call it "punishment."
So I leave you with the following thought:
Does a place of eternal suffering protect anyone?
Of course not, so hell is not actually punishment. It's something else... it's a made-up rule that says that people who do not have faith (see above for definition) burn forever. If you can come up with a good reason for that, using words that we both agree on the meaning, then that's fine, but considering that I already don't think faith has any value, and don't see any value in burning people forever, I doubt that very much.
If I were a loving, all powerful God, I'd have simply made everyone eternally happy.
Some examples of poetic words are words like "faith", "deserves" and "worthy". While they might seem perfectly logical, one has to try to deconstruct a word into its simplest form, and then one will know whether or not that word really has meaning.
Let me start with "faith".
In the real world, an intelligent person will believe something in the same proportion to the quality of the evidence which they know of. Here is a chart to demonstrate:
The next chart shows the opposite: Irrational thinking, where a person's confidence level is the opposite of the quality of the evidence which they have.
The dictionary definition of faith is: Belief without proof. The less evidence, the more faith is required. Here's the chart.
The next chart demonstrates that intelligent belief + faith = 100% certainty. Faith is when you believe something in spite of the quality of the evidence. It's a stuffing, like the polystyrene chips that one has to dig out of a box to get to the thing which really matters.
You may ask, "What if someone says they have faith in someone's ability to drive?" In that context, the word faith is exactly as I've defined it above. Based on all evidence available there might be a 99.99% chance that they will survive driving from A to B, but if you are 100% confident, you have inflated your confidence by 0.01% above reality.
What I'm writing is not really about faith. It's more to demonstrate that whatever you believe faith is, if it's not this, then it's different to what I believe it is. That means that if you and I have a different understanding of a word, it won't make sense for us to use it in a conversation. We would have to search for words that we both agree on the meaning.
The next two words I want to talk about are "deserves" and "worthy". Unlike faith, these words do have a meaning, but only in a certain context. That context is a made-up rule or law.
If you drop an apple, and it hits the ground, you've proven the fact that gravity makes apples drop to the ground, but you cannot say "an apple deserves to hit the ground", because that implies a made-up rule.
The apple is not worthy of hitting the ground either, because it still implies a made-up rule. You may say that Prince William deserves to be king, or that he is worthy of being a king, which is correct, because the made-up rule might be something like "princes become kings".
The problem with "deserves" and "worthy", is that if you use them to argue a case, you're implying a rule, and it's usually the rule itself that needs to be argued. I may not agree that princes should become kings. Instead I may believe that a better rule would be to have a contest to determine who the next king should be.
A rule also requires a reason. This reason is absolutely essential for a reasonable argument. To say "princes become kings" has no value without a reason. The reason might be something like, because royal families have a lot of power, so they keep the king in the family to be selfish. (I don't know if that's the reason, but I'm just making this up)
The next word I want to talk about is "punishment", which relates nicely to "deserves" and "worthy", because punishment is based on made-up rules that serve a purpose.
The purpose of punishment is typically something like this: To protect the majority of people. It does so because people will see the punishment, which is typically something painful or uncomfortable, causing them to have fear, or it will keep them locked up, so that they're no longer able to harm other people.
So punishment protects a group of people, and works by either through fear, or prevention.
When I ask religious people whether hell is revenge or punishment, they usually don't respond, but those who do respond call it "punishment."
So I leave you with the following thought:
Does a place of eternal suffering protect anyone?
Of course not, so hell is not actually punishment. It's something else... it's a made-up rule that says that people who do not have faith (see above for definition) burn forever. If you can come up with a good reason for that, using words that we both agree on the meaning, then that's fine, but considering that I already don't think faith has any value, and don't see any value in burning people forever, I doubt that very much.
If I were a loving, all powerful God, I'd have simply made everyone eternally happy.
Tuesday 5 July 2011
Truth, Lies, Documentaries and Dr Burzynski
I'm skeptical about Dr. Burzynski.
(This blog post is about the movie entitled "Burzynski". For the record, I am not involved in the medical industry at all. I am also not trying to prove anything, but merely sharing my thoughts.)
For a few years I had a best friend who was a compulsive liar. Because I was so used to honesty, the idea of my best friend lying to me didn't even enter my mind. I believed he was playing rugby for the South African under 21 rugby team, that he had a fancy car he wanted to sell me, and that he needed to borrow money for this, that, and the other.
I was also a Christian. I knew there were things in the bible that didn't seem quite right, but after watching Ron Wyatt's documentary on the discovery of the Ark, I was completely convinced that the Ark actually existed, which proved the reliability of the bible. I wondered why such an important documentary was not on television, for the whole world to see. I wanted to find out more, and so I looked up Ron Wyatt on the internet.
One reviewer described Ron as being able to "Sell sand in the desert." That was how convincing he was, but as soon as I had looked him up I realized that he not only discovered the Ark, he also discovered eighteen other bible artifacts, which no-one else could find, including Jesus' blood! The word "quack" suddenly entered my mind, and the strongest evidence I had for the reliability of the bible was flushed down the toilet.
It was partially as a result of finding out that things I believed in were lies, that I have learned to always check things that sound a bit far fetched, often leading to upsetting people who are so fond of the lies that they believe.
In a biased documentary it seems that there is often a little piece of undeniable evidence that is either ignored, or brushed over, and covered up with hundreds of pieces of potential evidence that overwhelm our minds, and lead us to not even considering that hidden obstacle.
When I hear, read, or watch anything that doesn't seem quite right, it is this tiny, but overriding obstacle that I look out for.
Unfortunately when it comes to medical claims, it's a bit more difficult to find this obstacle in what he's claiming, because most of the sciency stuff that he says doesn't mean anything to me. It would be easier to evaluate his claims if he was saying that his prayers cured cancer. I've heard that a couple of times from people, saying that someone they knew prayed and the cancer instantly disappeared. In that case the obstacle is very easy to identify, it's one of these: They never have details for a doctor who can verify their claims, prayer never fixes amputated limbs, and double-blind tests have shown that prayer does nothing for sick people.
If Dr. Burzynski had said that it was prayer that was curing cancer, I'm sure alarm bells would have been ringing no matter how many people believed that Dr. Burzynski had cured them.
In the medical world there are certain standards that are required in order to consider a conclusion to be valid. One is that their articles are peer reviewed, which sources say Dr. Burzynski doesn't, and the other is testing methods. The testing method I know of is the double-blind test, where neither the tester, nor the patient know whether the medicine is real or not. This is a great test to prove that homeopathic "medicine", and prayer doesn't work, but it's not really suitable for dying patients.
After reading a few articles on Dr. Burzynski the following six alarm bells stand out:
1. No-one else has been able to get antineoplastons to work.
2. His articles are not peer reviewed.
3. The movie is entirely one sided. It is made from Dr. Burzynski's point of view. What we really need to see is an investigative movie, something like what Derren Brown does.
4. If I chose to be a medical researcher for the American Cancer Society, I would have had every intention to cure diseases, regardless of how much money the company I worked for might be making from them.
5. If it is true that Dr. B is not what he says he is, it's quite simply because he makes a hell of a lot of money from this. I've read that his treatments can cost around $20,000 to $30,000 per year. It seems a bit steep for someone who cares so much about his patients' well-being.
6. Obviously having the patent allows him to make money, but doesn't that mean that Dr. B is potentially preventing other doctors from curing cancer?
I think the big obstacle is either #1, or #2.
So, in conclusion, I cannot prove that Dr. B is a "quack", but he certainly seems very suspicious. I'm a big supporter of the scientific method, which requires people to try and disprove other peoples' hypothesis, and I welcome anyone to point out any mistakes in this blog.
Whether it's Dr. B, or the American Cancer Society that's the problem, I'm sure that we can all agree that the real problem is money!
Here are my sources:
Anti-B sites:
http://www.burzynskiscam.com/
http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/Cancer/burzynski1.htmlhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2010/05/harnessing_peoples_good_to_pay_for_woo.php
http://www.cancer.org/Treatment/TreatmentsandSideEffects/ComplementaryandAlternativeMedicine/PharmacologicalandBiologicalTreatment/antineoplaston-therapy
http://www.ratbags.com/rsoles/comment/burzynski.htm
Pro-B:
https://www.burzynskimovie.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=96&Itemid=77
Interesting reading (Science - how to fake it):
http://madartlab.com/2011/03/24/faking-it/
(This blog post is about the movie entitled "Burzynski". For the record, I am not involved in the medical industry at all. I am also not trying to prove anything, but merely sharing my thoughts.)
For a few years I had a best friend who was a compulsive liar. Because I was so used to honesty, the idea of my best friend lying to me didn't even enter my mind. I believed he was playing rugby for the South African under 21 rugby team, that he had a fancy car he wanted to sell me, and that he needed to borrow money for this, that, and the other.
I was also a Christian. I knew there were things in the bible that didn't seem quite right, but after watching Ron Wyatt's documentary on the discovery of the Ark, I was completely convinced that the Ark actually existed, which proved the reliability of the bible. I wondered why such an important documentary was not on television, for the whole world to see. I wanted to find out more, and so I looked up Ron Wyatt on the internet.
One reviewer described Ron as being able to "Sell sand in the desert." That was how convincing he was, but as soon as I had looked him up I realized that he not only discovered the Ark, he also discovered eighteen other bible artifacts, which no-one else could find, including Jesus' blood! The word "quack" suddenly entered my mind, and the strongest evidence I had for the reliability of the bible was flushed down the toilet.
It was partially as a result of finding out that things I believed in were lies, that I have learned to always check things that sound a bit far fetched, often leading to upsetting people who are so fond of the lies that they believe.
In a biased documentary it seems that there is often a little piece of undeniable evidence that is either ignored, or brushed over, and covered up with hundreds of pieces of potential evidence that overwhelm our minds, and lead us to not even considering that hidden obstacle.
When I hear, read, or watch anything that doesn't seem quite right, it is this tiny, but overriding obstacle that I look out for.
Unfortunately when it comes to medical claims, it's a bit more difficult to find this obstacle in what he's claiming, because most of the sciency stuff that he says doesn't mean anything to me. It would be easier to evaluate his claims if he was saying that his prayers cured cancer. I've heard that a couple of times from people, saying that someone they knew prayed and the cancer instantly disappeared. In that case the obstacle is very easy to identify, it's one of these: They never have details for a doctor who can verify their claims, prayer never fixes amputated limbs, and double-blind tests have shown that prayer does nothing for sick people.
If Dr. Burzynski had said that it was prayer that was curing cancer, I'm sure alarm bells would have been ringing no matter how many people believed that Dr. Burzynski had cured them.
In the medical world there are certain standards that are required in order to consider a conclusion to be valid. One is that their articles are peer reviewed, which sources say Dr. Burzynski doesn't, and the other is testing methods. The testing method I know of is the double-blind test, where neither the tester, nor the patient know whether the medicine is real or not. This is a great test to prove that homeopathic "medicine", and prayer doesn't work, but it's not really suitable for dying patients.
After reading a few articles on Dr. Burzynski the following six alarm bells stand out:
1. No-one else has been able to get antineoplastons to work.
2. His articles are not peer reviewed.
3. The movie is entirely one sided. It is made from Dr. Burzynski's point of view. What we really need to see is an investigative movie, something like what Derren Brown does.
4. If I chose to be a medical researcher for the American Cancer Society, I would have had every intention to cure diseases, regardless of how much money the company I worked for might be making from them.
5. If it is true that Dr. B is not what he says he is, it's quite simply because he makes a hell of a lot of money from this. I've read that his treatments can cost around $20,000 to $30,000 per year. It seems a bit steep for someone who cares so much about his patients' well-being.
6. Obviously having the patent allows him to make money, but doesn't that mean that Dr. B is potentially preventing other doctors from curing cancer?
I think the big obstacle is either #1, or #2.
So, in conclusion, I cannot prove that Dr. B is a "quack", but he certainly seems very suspicious. I'm a big supporter of the scientific method, which requires people to try and disprove other peoples' hypothesis, and I welcome anyone to point out any mistakes in this blog.
Whether it's Dr. B, or the American Cancer Society that's the problem, I'm sure that we can all agree that the real problem is money!
Here are my sources:
Anti-B sites:
http://www.burzynskiscam.com/
http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/Cancer/burzynski1.htmlhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2010/05/harnessing_peoples_good_to_pay_for_woo.php
http://www.cancer.org/Treatment/TreatmentsandSideEffects/ComplementaryandAlternativeMedicine/PharmacologicalandBiologicalTreatment/antineoplaston-therapy
http://www.ratbags.com/rsoles/comment/burzynski.htm
Pro-B:
https://www.burzynskimovie.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=96&Itemid=77
Interesting reading (Science - how to fake it):
http://madartlab.com/2011/03/24/faking-it/
Friday 10 June 2011
How does one know that what one believes is the truth?
How does one know that what one believes is the truth?
I grew up going to church every sunday, being constantly reminded that if I do not believe the "holy" bible I will be tortured in hell eternally.
Most people have a problem. We have a belief that the things we believe are true, and any knowledge that disagrees with our fixed beliefs is to be rejected and fought against. It's particularly difficult to consider new information if you have something to lose, like if you're a preacher, who earns his salary because of his beliefs, or as I mentioned earlier, you've been threatened with some kind of godly punishment. Jehovah's Witnesses have their friends and family at stake.
I think the technical term for this "truth" defence problem is called cognitive dissonance.
To prove that it's a problem that at least 70% of the world faces, if you google "religions chart", and you'll see that the biggest group of religious believers is approximately 30% of the world. Assuming that group to be right would mean that the other 70% of the world believes a bunch of nonsense. If a smaller group is right, then a higher percentage of the world believes nonsense.
This is one of my favourite videos, because it illustrates the sheer ridiculousness of this problem: a Muslim trying to prove that the Earth is flat.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wppjYDj9JUc
Besides religion, this problem also occurs in politics. My grandfather and great uncle refused to talk to each other because of their different political opinions. The were both VERY kind to me, so I guess they both had good intentions, but believed too strongly that they were right.
The following is from Anthony Robbins' book, "Awaken the Giant Within":
'...People were asked, "How would you define communism?" An astonishing number of the respondents were terrorized even by the question, but not many could actually define it - all they knew was that it was horrifying!'
Another point he makes in his book is that in a war, Chinese communists used people's strong desire to stay true to their identity in order to convert captured American soldiers to the communist point of view. After tiring out the soldiers they asked them to write down answers to questions about communism, and somehow managed to get the soldiers to answer in a way that made communism look good. After the process was complete, they had succeeded in converting the Americans, because people like to stick behind what they've said, and stay true to their identity. However we see ourselves, we try to defend that identity.
Since many Americans have been brainwashed to believe that capitalism is the way to go, and Chinese people have been brainwashed to believe that communism is right, can we actually trust our own thoughts? Perhaps the answer is that neither are perfect and the answer lies somewhere in the middle. Interestingly, if you google the Chinese government, if seems that they're called the Communist Party, but they political system used is not actually communism.
Sorry about getting so stuck on communism here, but there does seem to be a lot of misunderstanding and brain washing about it, but I just want to make one more point, if Jesus would have voted, and he had the option to choose communist or capitalist, which do you think he would have chosen? Based on his teachings, that one should give to those who ask, and stories that early Christians shared everything they had, I would think that Jesus would have voted for the communists. I think this idea would confust a lot of anti-communist Christians.
So, can one ever know that one knows the truth?
There are two important topics that I want to mention with regard to finding out the truth: open mindedness and the scientific method.
Here is a really good video on open mindedness:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T69TOuqaqXI
There is also very good book on open mindedness, called "Software for your Brain", which is available as a free download from
http://www.schoolofthinking.org/software.pdf
It teaches the reader to try and see things from different points of view.
The scientific method, in case you're unfamiliar with it, is mostly about testing things to see if they're true or false.
From Wikipedia:
" Define the question
Gather information and resources (observe)
Form hypothesis
Perform experiment and collect data
Analyze data
Interpret data and draw conclusions that serve as a starting point for new hypothesis
Publish results
Retest (frequently done by other scientists)
The iterative cycle inherent in this step-by-step methodology goes from point 3 to 6 back to 3 again."
So, if we were to use the scientific method to test whether or not God exists, it might go something like this:
- Define the question (make it simple and unambiguous): Does a god exist who is completely loving, and can do absolutely anything he wants?
- Form hypothesis: The world is an absolutely fantastic, perfect place, and everyone wakes up every day, excited and happy.
- After testing to see if the hypothesis is true, publishing the results, and asking other scientists to retest, we can determine that the hypothesis is false, in which case the answer to the question is "no", or that the hypothesis is true, in which case the answer to the question is "maybe".
Lets try another one: Does God answer prayers?
- Define the question: Are people more likely to be healed if they pray to God, than if they don't?
- Form hypothesis: More people who pray are healthier than the number of people who don't pray.
- Test the hypothesis... you can try to lookup stuff like this on the net.
OR
- Define the question: Do people who pray ever recover from things that people who don't pray recover from?
- Form hypothesis: There are numerous accounts of people whose lost limbs have grown back after praying, or numerous accounts of people who have recovered from other illnesses after praying that no-one who didn't pray ever recovered from.
- Test the hypothesis... you can try to lookup stuff like this on the net.
OR
- Define the question: Is the Jehovah's Witness religion true?
- Hypothesis: Armageddon occured in 1914 and 1975, wiping out everyone who was not a JW.
etc..
In order to become open minded, and allow oneself to see things from different points of view, one should be careful about putting a label on ones identity. For example, someone labelled a Christian, or Athiest, or Communist, or Capitalist, will try to stick to that point of view.
So, for me, I am not a Christian, I am not a Muslim, I am not an Athiest, I am not a Communist, nor am I a Capitalist: Instead, I am constantly testing things to see if they are true, I am constantly learning, growing, finding out new things, and seeing things from different points of view.
Any thoughts?
Anyone have something to add to this, on ways to journey closer to the truth?
I grew up going to church every sunday, being constantly reminded that if I do not believe the "holy" bible I will be tortured in hell eternally.
Most people have a problem. We have a belief that the things we believe are true, and any knowledge that disagrees with our fixed beliefs is to be rejected and fought against. It's particularly difficult to consider new information if you have something to lose, like if you're a preacher, who earns his salary because of his beliefs, or as I mentioned earlier, you've been threatened with some kind of godly punishment. Jehovah's Witnesses have their friends and family at stake.
I think the technical term for this "truth" defence problem is called cognitive dissonance.
To prove that it's a problem that at least 70% of the world faces, if you google "religions chart", and you'll see that the biggest group of religious believers is approximately 30% of the world. Assuming that group to be right would mean that the other 70% of the world believes a bunch of nonsense. If a smaller group is right, then a higher percentage of the world believes nonsense.
This is one of my favourite videos, because it illustrates the sheer ridiculousness of this problem: a Muslim trying to prove that the Earth is flat.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wppjYDj9JUc
Besides religion, this problem also occurs in politics. My grandfather and great uncle refused to talk to each other because of their different political opinions. The were both VERY kind to me, so I guess they both had good intentions, but believed too strongly that they were right.
The following is from Anthony Robbins' book, "Awaken the Giant Within":
'...People were asked, "How would you define communism?" An astonishing number of the respondents were terrorized even by the question, but not many could actually define it - all they knew was that it was horrifying!'
Another point he makes in his book is that in a war, Chinese communists used people's strong desire to stay true to their identity in order to convert captured American soldiers to the communist point of view. After tiring out the soldiers they asked them to write down answers to questions about communism, and somehow managed to get the soldiers to answer in a way that made communism look good. After the process was complete, they had succeeded in converting the Americans, because people like to stick behind what they've said, and stay true to their identity. However we see ourselves, we try to defend that identity.
Since many Americans have been brainwashed to believe that capitalism is the way to go, and Chinese people have been brainwashed to believe that communism is right, can we actually trust our own thoughts? Perhaps the answer is that neither are perfect and the answer lies somewhere in the middle. Interestingly, if you google the Chinese government, if seems that they're called the Communist Party, but they political system used is not actually communism.
Sorry about getting so stuck on communism here, but there does seem to be a lot of misunderstanding and brain washing about it, but I just want to make one more point, if Jesus would have voted, and he had the option to choose communist or capitalist, which do you think he would have chosen? Based on his teachings, that one should give to those who ask, and stories that early Christians shared everything they had, I would think that Jesus would have voted for the communists. I think this idea would confust a lot of anti-communist Christians.
So, can one ever know that one knows the truth?
There are two important topics that I want to mention with regard to finding out the truth: open mindedness and the scientific method.
Here is a really good video on open mindedness:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T69TOuqaqXI
There is also very good book on open mindedness, called "Software for your Brain", which is available as a free download from
http://www.schoolofthinking.org/software.pdf
It teaches the reader to try and see things from different points of view.
The scientific method, in case you're unfamiliar with it, is mostly about testing things to see if they're true or false.
From Wikipedia:
" Define the question
Gather information and resources (observe)
Form hypothesis
Perform experiment and collect data
Analyze data
Interpret data and draw conclusions that serve as a starting point for new hypothesis
Publish results
Retest (frequently done by other scientists)
The iterative cycle inherent in this step-by-step methodology goes from point 3 to 6 back to 3 again."
So, if we were to use the scientific method to test whether or not God exists, it might go something like this:
- Define the question (make it simple and unambiguous): Does a god exist who is completely loving, and can do absolutely anything he wants?
- Form hypothesis: The world is an absolutely fantastic, perfect place, and everyone wakes up every day, excited and happy.
- After testing to see if the hypothesis is true, publishing the results, and asking other scientists to retest, we can determine that the hypothesis is false, in which case the answer to the question is "no", or that the hypothesis is true, in which case the answer to the question is "maybe".
Lets try another one: Does God answer prayers?
- Define the question: Are people more likely to be healed if they pray to God, than if they don't?
- Form hypothesis: More people who pray are healthier than the number of people who don't pray.
- Test the hypothesis... you can try to lookup stuff like this on the net.
OR
- Define the question: Do people who pray ever recover from things that people who don't pray recover from?
- Form hypothesis: There are numerous accounts of people whose lost limbs have grown back after praying, or numerous accounts of people who have recovered from other illnesses after praying that no-one who didn't pray ever recovered from.
- Test the hypothesis... you can try to lookup stuff like this on the net.
OR
- Define the question: Is the Jehovah's Witness religion true?
- Hypothesis: Armageddon occured in 1914 and 1975, wiping out everyone who was not a JW.
etc..
In order to become open minded, and allow oneself to see things from different points of view, one should be careful about putting a label on ones identity. For example, someone labelled a Christian, or Athiest, or Communist, or Capitalist, will try to stick to that point of view.
So, for me, I am not a Christian, I am not a Muslim, I am not an Athiest, I am not a Communist, nor am I a Capitalist: Instead, I am constantly testing things to see if they are true, I am constantly learning, growing, finding out new things, and seeing things from different points of view.
Any thoughts?
Anyone have something to add to this, on ways to journey closer to the truth?
Friday 8 April 2011
What is the soul?
Having been religious I often searched for evidence agreeing with my point of view. I have since left my religion, because of the vast amount of evidence against it, but there are still two concepts that boggle my mind: The beginning of time, and the soul.
My understanding of what the soul is, is not a ghost that floats around, scaring people at night. It is you, the thing that makes you alive, that allows you to experience pain and happiness, and differentiates you from a robot.
Perhaps you're believe that pain and happiness are merely electrical signals travelling around in your brain, which I think is partly correct, but I will share some examples as to why I think it isn't that simple.
I don't think of humans as being their bodies. I think of us as being our souls, using our bodies and brains to understand and interact with the world.
Example 1 - An empty universe
If a tree falls in the forest, does it make a sound? Imagine a universe without people or animals. Nothing that happens within the universe would matter at all. All the billions of stars and planets would serve absolutely no purpose. Nothing matters until a single soul exists, having the ability to experience pain and happiness, and a body to receive information about its surroundings.
Example 2 - A robot
Imagine a scientist creates a robot. He uses a variable, called happiness, which can have a value from zero to a hundred, in order to simulate happiness. This robot acts and looks exactly like a human. If you roll it down a cliff, sensors will case the happiness variable to reduce its value, and cause the robot to emit pain noises. Anyone watching this will feel sorry for the robot, because they don't know that it doesn't have a consciousness, it doesn't have a soul, and cannot really experience pain. Only the scientist will not feel sorry for it.
Example 3.1 - Evil's clone
Imagine someone who doesn't love. The only person they care about is themself. This person is pure evil. He likes to kill people, but he loves himself, and hates experiencing any kind of pain.
He is going to be frozen, and an exact clone is going to be made of him: every single atom is going to be the same.
Before the procedure, he is asked, "When you wake up, we're going to beat one of the two of you. Does it matter which one we beat?"
His answer is obviously that he would prefer the clone to be beaten, and not the original. As far as the science I am aware of is concerned, it shouldn't matter, because both humans are exactly the same. It does, however, make sense if you say that his soul exists in the original body, and is not made up of atoms.
Example 3.2 - Evil's future
Imagine a slightly different scenario: Mr Evil, above, is asked whether he would prefer to be beaten tomorrow, or thirty years in the future (and somehow they guarantee he will still be alive then). I think most people would say that it doesn't matter to Mr Evil, because the tomorrow Mr Evil, and thirty years from now Mr Evil will still be the same person. But, will he? Most of the atoms in our bodies are replaced within our lifetime. Google "what percentage of atoms are replaced in our bodies"... you will see sites saying 98% of your body is replaced every year!
In fact, how do we even know, that when we wake up tomorrow, we still have the same body that we had yesterday? If we have a new body, we will have a new brain, and new memories, so we probably wouldn't know.
Example 3.3 - Evil's 50 / 50
Mr Evil is told before he is cloned that they're going to do an additional operation while he is frozen:
They're going to swap half of the atoms in the original body with half of the atoms in the clone.
"Which one can we beat, Mr Evil?"
Any idea what his answer would be, and why?
Example 3.4 - Evil's replacement
Same as 3.3, but all the atoms are replaced, one by one, until eventually the clone is the original, and the original is the clone.
"Which one can we beat, Mr Evil?"
Any idea what his answer would be, and why?
Someone said something that bugged me. They said that they were worried that if we create artificial intelligence, and it comes out slightly stupid, we wouldn't be able to switch it off, for ethical reasons. Hopefully no-one here thinks that, because AI will not have a consciousness, and it won't have a soul.
There are also people who believe that if you were able to upload your thoughts into an artificially intelligent computer, you could come alive again... I strongly disagree with that.
There was also a movie, about a magician, who made a clone of himself, and drowned his original body in secret in order to give the illusion that he was transporting himself. This is a bit like how a Star Trek transporter could work: make a copy, and delete the original. The magician was worried, because he never knew whether he would be remain the original, or become the clone.
I think it's quite obvious that he remained the original, which he drowned. My understanding, is that it's because the original body is connected to his soul.
I'm really keen to hear if anyone has any insight into this.
Does what I've written make sense?
Do you have an explanation as to what the soul is?
Do you think animals have souls?
Do plants have souls?
Are souls made of atoms?
My understanding of what the soul is, is not a ghost that floats around, scaring people at night. It is you, the thing that makes you alive, that allows you to experience pain and happiness, and differentiates you from a robot.
Perhaps you're believe that pain and happiness are merely electrical signals travelling around in your brain, which I think is partly correct, but I will share some examples as to why I think it isn't that simple.
I don't think of humans as being their bodies. I think of us as being our souls, using our bodies and brains to understand and interact with the world.
Example 1 - An empty universe
If a tree falls in the forest, does it make a sound? Imagine a universe without people or animals. Nothing that happens within the universe would matter at all. All the billions of stars and planets would serve absolutely no purpose. Nothing matters until a single soul exists, having the ability to experience pain and happiness, and a body to receive information about its surroundings.
Example 2 - A robot
Imagine a scientist creates a robot. He uses a variable, called happiness, which can have a value from zero to a hundred, in order to simulate happiness. This robot acts and looks exactly like a human. If you roll it down a cliff, sensors will case the happiness variable to reduce its value, and cause the robot to emit pain noises. Anyone watching this will feel sorry for the robot, because they don't know that it doesn't have a consciousness, it doesn't have a soul, and cannot really experience pain. Only the scientist will not feel sorry for it.
Example 3.1 - Evil's clone
Imagine someone who doesn't love. The only person they care about is themself. This person is pure evil. He likes to kill people, but he loves himself, and hates experiencing any kind of pain.
He is going to be frozen, and an exact clone is going to be made of him: every single atom is going to be the same.
Before the procedure, he is asked, "When you wake up, we're going to beat one of the two of you. Does it matter which one we beat?"
His answer is obviously that he would prefer the clone to be beaten, and not the original. As far as the science I am aware of is concerned, it shouldn't matter, because both humans are exactly the same. It does, however, make sense if you say that his soul exists in the original body, and is not made up of atoms.
Example 3.2 - Evil's future
Imagine a slightly different scenario: Mr Evil, above, is asked whether he would prefer to be beaten tomorrow, or thirty years in the future (and somehow they guarantee he will still be alive then). I think most people would say that it doesn't matter to Mr Evil, because the tomorrow Mr Evil, and thirty years from now Mr Evil will still be the same person. But, will he? Most of the atoms in our bodies are replaced within our lifetime. Google "what percentage of atoms are replaced in our bodies"... you will see sites saying 98% of your body is replaced every year!
In fact, how do we even know, that when we wake up tomorrow, we still have the same body that we had yesterday? If we have a new body, we will have a new brain, and new memories, so we probably wouldn't know.
Example 3.3 - Evil's 50 / 50
Mr Evil is told before he is cloned that they're going to do an additional operation while he is frozen:
They're going to swap half of the atoms in the original body with half of the atoms in the clone.
"Which one can we beat, Mr Evil?"
Any idea what his answer would be, and why?
Example 3.4 - Evil's replacement
Same as 3.3, but all the atoms are replaced, one by one, until eventually the clone is the original, and the original is the clone.
"Which one can we beat, Mr Evil?"
Any idea what his answer would be, and why?
Someone said something that bugged me. They said that they were worried that if we create artificial intelligence, and it comes out slightly stupid, we wouldn't be able to switch it off, for ethical reasons. Hopefully no-one here thinks that, because AI will not have a consciousness, and it won't have a soul.
There are also people who believe that if you were able to upload your thoughts into an artificially intelligent computer, you could come alive again... I strongly disagree with that.
There was also a movie, about a magician, who made a clone of himself, and drowned his original body in secret in order to give the illusion that he was transporting himself. This is a bit like how a Star Trek transporter could work: make a copy, and delete the original. The magician was worried, because he never knew whether he would be remain the original, or become the clone.
I think it's quite obvious that he remained the original, which he drowned. My understanding, is that it's because the original body is connected to his soul.
I'm really keen to hear if anyone has any insight into this.
Does what I've written make sense?
Do you have an explanation as to what the soul is?
Do you think animals have souls?
Do plants have souls?
Are souls made of atoms?
Thursday 10 March 2011
Hidden implications of Genesis
As a teenager I read the first book of the bible a couple of times, but I suppose I was so used to the stories that I didn't notice anything strange. Today when I read it, I see a completely different story.
The bible is completely true, or at least that's what many people believe. When asking them which translation is true, the person might pick their favourite translation. When asking about things that contradict, be logically incorrect, or refer to unscientific things like the four corners of the Earth, one might get a response that some of it is symbolic, and not meant to be taken literally, but everything else is entirely true.
The same principle can be applied to ANY piece of writing. All writing is entirely true, except for the parts which you don't take literally.
Of course this is quite ridiculous, so I'm just going to take Genesis as meaning exactly what it says and show you some interesting things that you may never have seen before.
I'm going to use the NIV, because I think it's the most popular version.
Gen 1:1 "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters."
It takes a lot of imagination to imagine this. Because this is so unusual, it could probably mean anything. The earth was formless, and empty... how can something be formless? Anyway, it was empty... does that mean there were no trees, or does that mean it was a hollow ball? Depending on your beliefs, you will probably choose your own definition for all of this.
Gen 1:3 "And God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light."
So God created the heavens, before he created light? Okay, I suppose this could be possible, depending how you interpret it, like "heavens" could refer to the atmosphere, but it sounds to me like he made all the stars, but they weren't glowing. Lets skip ahead to verse 14...
Gen 1:14 "And God said, "Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night... etc."
Gen 1:16 "God made two great lights-the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars... etc."
Confusing... I thought he already made the light, back in verse 3. Anyway, it sounds a bit like God is using a 3D modelling program, like 3DS max, where you can create things in any sort of order, and enable them, and then disable them.
Gen 1:31 "God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning-the sixth day."
Now can anyone argue that the bible says that everything was created in SIX days? Scientists think that the world is 4.5 billion years old, and the universe is 13.75 billion years old. If they are correct, then the universe was created 9 billion years before Earth. From the geneologies in the bible, we can calculate that this all happened about 6000 years ago.
The only sense I can make out of this is that God must have made everything look a lot older than it really was. God tends to take a lot of effort to make it appear as if he does not exist. He's really good at keeping himself invisible, and not talking to anyone, except through dreams and visions, and only cures disease that might have been misdiagnosed, or cured by themselves. He never cures amputees.
Gen 1:20 God makes all the living creatures. I would assume this includes snakes, spiders, cockroaches, worms, bacteria, germs, viruses, scorpions, lions, wolves, etc.
Gen 2:5 "Now no shrub had yet appeared on earth and no plant had yet sprung up..." (What? okay, we have gone back in time) "..., for the LORD God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no one to work the ground, but streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground."
I guess this means that water didn't used to evaporate and condense? The laws of physics were somewhat different?
In Genesis 2:8, God builds the garden in Eden. He makes some trees, including the "Tree of life", and the "Tree of the knowledge of good and evil".
Why did God create these trees? Did he want Adam and Eve to eat the fruit? It reminds me of an experiment that Derren Brown did, where he made a girl kill a kitten on television. Well, she didn't actually kill the kitten, because it was just a test, but she pushed the button that she thought would kill the kitten. Why did she do it? Because Derren put her in a situation where she would be unable to control her urge to push the big, red button. God did the same to Adam and Eve by sticking the tree in the middle of the garden, and telling them not to eat the fruit. It's an inevitable result of human psychology that we will want to eat the fruit. God knew this, because he made them, and would have expected them to eat the fruit.
Gen 2: 18 "The LORD God said, 'It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.'"
At this point, I'd like to know, did God create only male animals, or did he create male and female animals and only consider making a female human later? Also, did Adam have the parts required to reproduce, or did God have to modify him after creating Eve?
No, hang on... the bible's not talking about a woman yet, because the next verses say:
Gen 2:19 "Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky and all the wild animals. But for Adam no suitable helper was found."
God was looking for a helper for him amongst the animals?
Gen 3:1 "Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, 'Did God really say, "You must not eat from any tree in the garden"?'"
Imagine the situation... the serpent is more crafty than the other wild animals. So the lions and dogs might have been crafty, but not quite as crafty as the serpent. That's a pretty wierd thing to say. And then suddenly the serpent talks! If I were writing Genesis, I would probably have written the following at that point: "And the woman shouted 'HOLY CRAP!' and ran to Adam, yelling 'The snake just spoke!' And Adam replied, 'Holy Crap! Where's God? Have you told him?'"
I also wonder how the snake would have spoken, and what it would have sounded like. I imagine it thpeaking with a lithp.
Gen 3:14 "So the LORD God said to the serpent, 'Because you have done this,
Cursed are you above all livestock
and all wild animals!
You will crawl on your belly
and you will eat dust
all the days of your life...'"
Interesting to learn that snakes used to walk around on their feet, before this curse. Strange that snakes no longer eat dust, but still crawl on their bellies.
Gen 3:16 "To the woman he said,
'I will make your pains in childbearing very severe;
with painful labor you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you.'"
I have a couple of things to say about this. Obviously these curses are implied as curses to descendents as well, because women still have lots of pain when they give birth.
Who thinks this may have been a little bit of an over-reaction on God's part?
At this point I think I should explain the difference between punishment and revenge, because the bible gets them muddled up a lot.
Punishment (or justice) exists to make the world a better place for the majority of people. It does not exist to hurt people, but people get hurt so that they will know not to repeat the offence and as a warning to others.
Revenge does not serve the world. It exists mostly as a way to resolve feelings of anger.
Now, was this punishment, or revenge? I'm not going to tell you, because you're smart enough to figure it out.
Gen 3:17 "To Adam he said, 'Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, "You must not eat from it,"
'Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat food from it
all the days of your life.
It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.
By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return.'"
Again... is it punishment, or revenge... does it solve a problem, or does it exist to resolve anger?
Interesting that it says "By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food", since most people no longer sweat while we work for food. Were we actually able to save ourselves from this curse, or are we sinning by working in air-conditioned offices?
Gen 3:21 "The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. And the LORD God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.' So the LORD God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life."
I love this bit, and I think I will stop here. Firstly, there's a tree of life, which gives you eternal life... The logical thing would have been to not plant it in the first place, ... or just let us eat and live forever. Anyway, do you think this tree has died now? It is the tree of life, so probably not.
It's probably still there... all we have to do is look for the cherubim and a flashing sword.
So the cherubim and flashing sword are on the east side... can't we still get in through the north, south and west? Or does this imply a wall around it? And, if there was a wall around the garden, I would imagine that in order to get to the streams they had to walk out of the east side of the garden, because a stream cannot flow through a wall.
Maybe God should have just placed the cherubim around the tree? wouldn't that have been easier?
Since swords had not been invented yet, I wonder if the sword looked more like a light sabre?
If you've read this far and you're thinking up a load of excuses for each and every one of these problems, just stop and be honest with yourself for once. The bible is supposed to be God's word, the best book ever written, and does not require excuses. The truth is obvious... that the simplest explanation for these problems is most likely the true explanation... figure it out.
The bible is completely true, or at least that's what many people believe. When asking them which translation is true, the person might pick their favourite translation. When asking about things that contradict, be logically incorrect, or refer to unscientific things like the four corners of the Earth, one might get a response that some of it is symbolic, and not meant to be taken literally, but everything else is entirely true.
The same principle can be applied to ANY piece of writing. All writing is entirely true, except for the parts which you don't take literally.
Of course this is quite ridiculous, so I'm just going to take Genesis as meaning exactly what it says and show you some interesting things that you may never have seen before.
I'm going to use the NIV, because I think it's the most popular version.
Gen 1:1 "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters."
It takes a lot of imagination to imagine this. Because this is so unusual, it could probably mean anything. The earth was formless, and empty... how can something be formless? Anyway, it was empty... does that mean there were no trees, or does that mean it was a hollow ball? Depending on your beliefs, you will probably choose your own definition for all of this.
Gen 1:3 "And God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light."
So God created the heavens, before he created light? Okay, I suppose this could be possible, depending how you interpret it, like "heavens" could refer to the atmosphere, but it sounds to me like he made all the stars, but they weren't glowing. Lets skip ahead to verse 14...
Gen 1:14 "And God said, "Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night... etc."
Gen 1:16 "God made two great lights-the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars... etc."
Confusing... I thought he already made the light, back in verse 3. Anyway, it sounds a bit like God is using a 3D modelling program, like 3DS max, where you can create things in any sort of order, and enable them, and then disable them.
Gen 1:31 "God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning-the sixth day."
Now can anyone argue that the bible says that everything was created in SIX days? Scientists think that the world is 4.5 billion years old, and the universe is 13.75 billion years old. If they are correct, then the universe was created 9 billion years before Earth. From the geneologies in the bible, we can calculate that this all happened about 6000 years ago.
The only sense I can make out of this is that God must have made everything look a lot older than it really was. God tends to take a lot of effort to make it appear as if he does not exist. He's really good at keeping himself invisible, and not talking to anyone, except through dreams and visions, and only cures disease that might have been misdiagnosed, or cured by themselves. He never cures amputees.
Gen 1:20 God makes all the living creatures. I would assume this includes snakes, spiders, cockroaches, worms, bacteria, germs, viruses, scorpions, lions, wolves, etc.
Gen 2:5 "Now no shrub had yet appeared on earth and no plant had yet sprung up..." (What? okay, we have gone back in time) "..., for the LORD God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no one to work the ground, but streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground."
I guess this means that water didn't used to evaporate and condense? The laws of physics were somewhat different?
In Genesis 2:8, God builds the garden in Eden. He makes some trees, including the "Tree of life", and the "Tree of the knowledge of good and evil".
Why did God create these trees? Did he want Adam and Eve to eat the fruit? It reminds me of an experiment that Derren Brown did, where he made a girl kill a kitten on television. Well, she didn't actually kill the kitten, because it was just a test, but she pushed the button that she thought would kill the kitten. Why did she do it? Because Derren put her in a situation where she would be unable to control her urge to push the big, red button. God did the same to Adam and Eve by sticking the tree in the middle of the garden, and telling them not to eat the fruit. It's an inevitable result of human psychology that we will want to eat the fruit. God knew this, because he made them, and would have expected them to eat the fruit.
Gen 2: 18 "The LORD God said, 'It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.'"
At this point, I'd like to know, did God create only male animals, or did he create male and female animals and only consider making a female human later? Also, did Adam have the parts required to reproduce, or did God have to modify him after creating Eve?
No, hang on... the bible's not talking about a woman yet, because the next verses say:
Gen 2:19 "Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky and all the wild animals. But for Adam no suitable helper was found."
God was looking for a helper for him amongst the animals?
Gen 3:1 "Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, 'Did God really say, "You must not eat from any tree in the garden"?'"
Imagine the situation... the serpent is more crafty than the other wild animals. So the lions and dogs might have been crafty, but not quite as crafty as the serpent. That's a pretty wierd thing to say. And then suddenly the serpent talks! If I were writing Genesis, I would probably have written the following at that point: "And the woman shouted 'HOLY CRAP!' and ran to Adam, yelling 'The snake just spoke!' And Adam replied, 'Holy Crap! Where's God? Have you told him?'"
I also wonder how the snake would have spoken, and what it would have sounded like. I imagine it thpeaking with a lithp.
Gen 3:14 "So the LORD God said to the serpent, 'Because you have done this,
Cursed are you above all livestock
and all wild animals!
You will crawl on your belly
and you will eat dust
all the days of your life...'"
Interesting to learn that snakes used to walk around on their feet, before this curse. Strange that snakes no longer eat dust, but still crawl on their bellies.
Gen 3:16 "To the woman he said,
'I will make your pains in childbearing very severe;
with painful labor you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you.'"
I have a couple of things to say about this. Obviously these curses are implied as curses to descendents as well, because women still have lots of pain when they give birth.
Who thinks this may have been a little bit of an over-reaction on God's part?
At this point I think I should explain the difference between punishment and revenge, because the bible gets them muddled up a lot.
Punishment (or justice) exists to make the world a better place for the majority of people. It does not exist to hurt people, but people get hurt so that they will know not to repeat the offence and as a warning to others.
Revenge does not serve the world. It exists mostly as a way to resolve feelings of anger.
Now, was this punishment, or revenge? I'm not going to tell you, because you're smart enough to figure it out.
Gen 3:17 "To Adam he said, 'Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, "You must not eat from it,"
'Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat food from it
all the days of your life.
It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.
By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return.'"
Again... is it punishment, or revenge... does it solve a problem, or does it exist to resolve anger?
Interesting that it says "By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food", since most people no longer sweat while we work for food. Were we actually able to save ourselves from this curse, or are we sinning by working in air-conditioned offices?
Gen 3:21 "The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. And the LORD God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.' So the LORD God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life."
I love this bit, and I think I will stop here. Firstly, there's a tree of life, which gives you eternal life... The logical thing would have been to not plant it in the first place, ... or just let us eat and live forever. Anyway, do you think this tree has died now? It is the tree of life, so probably not.
It's probably still there... all we have to do is look for the cherubim and a flashing sword.
So the cherubim and flashing sword are on the east side... can't we still get in through the north, south and west? Or does this imply a wall around it? And, if there was a wall around the garden, I would imagine that in order to get to the streams they had to walk out of the east side of the garden, because a stream cannot flow through a wall.
Maybe God should have just placed the cherubim around the tree? wouldn't that have been easier?
Since swords had not been invented yet, I wonder if the sword looked more like a light sabre?
If you've read this far and you're thinking up a load of excuses for each and every one of these problems, just stop and be honest with yourself for once. The bible is supposed to be God's word, the best book ever written, and does not require excuses. The truth is obvious... that the simplest explanation for these problems is most likely the true explanation... figure it out.
Thursday 24 February 2011
19 Reasons why I am not a Jehovah's Witness.
Following on from my previous post, here are the 19 reasons that I sent to a Jehovah's Witness. I only spent about an hour putting these together for an email conversation I had with him, but I think 19 reasons should be enough. Nevertheless, instead of trying to argue with all of the 19 reasons, which would probably have taken forever, the JW continued talking about the signs of the end of the world, giving no explanation as to what evidence he had that the number of signs had increased at any point:
- The idea of punishment in the bible appears to be a mixture of a response to human anger and justice, rather than pure justice. The purpose of justice is to prevent bad things happening - pain and death are simply by-products. If this is not understood then consider too that billions of people have not had access to the bible ("truth"). Any way you look at it - it's unfair.
- The idea of a devil spending all of his time trying to manipulate people into doing bad things seems ridiculous. It seems like the devil would be doing more than God, and the things the devil is accused of trying to make us do seem more likely to be a result of our natural need to survive, be warm, and reproduce.
- The creation seems to contradict any kind of evidence as to how the universe came about and its age. Also, God made some very horrible animals & diseases, not just pretty things.
- Genesis 1 tells a story that seems more like a fairy tale than anything else: talking snake, fiery sword, snakes eating dust, etc. Also God's placing the tree there in the first place, and taking revenge on descendants doesn't make any sense.
- Had the bible been inspired by God, I don't think the ignorance of the writers would have remained, e.g. four corners of the Earth & contradictions like the time of Jesus' death.
- I've heard that JW's are not meant to be friends with non-JW's, especially those who have left. I believe we should all be treated equally, regardless of our religious beliefs.
- The religion is anti-gay. I think to be anti-gay is just plain wrong - one does not choose one's sexual orientation.
- The founder of the JW religion used a pyramid to create his prophecy. No-one's explained how this works, but it makes him appear to be a bit mad.
- The Watchtower has predicted multiple comings of Jesus, and Jesus never came.
- According to the new testament (mainly Matthew), there was supposed to be some major event like the end of the world in the first century. It never happened.
- The JW's have made their own translation of the bible to suit their beliefs. The Watchtower's reason for "The word was (a) God" is not the same as their reason when they explain to Greek people.
- JW's are expected to agree with the Watchtower. They are not given the freedom to use their own intellect to determine whether something is true or not.
- There are always excuses why God does not appear to exist: he is invisible, do not put him to the test, he only talks to people in their dreams.
- If one were to develop a hypothesis as to what would happen if a loving, almighty God existed, it would fail.
- All "miracles" which happen today, are only things which might have happened anyway: Cured sickness, safe arrival, safe medical procedure. The following miracles do not happen: cars running without petrol in emergencies, amputated limbs re-appearing, etc.
- Even my most desperate prayers requesting faith and understanding do not get answered.
- The bible was written in languages which most people do not know. We do not have the originals, so thousands of mistakes / variations have crept into the manuscript copies that we have. These are then translated by people with different prejudices, beliefs, understandings, etc. The original meaning is often debatable, or very difficult to understand.
- The decision as to which books should be included in the New Testament was made by people. We have no proof that they chose the correct books.
- There is lots of research to indicate that JW's are far more prone to mental illnesses than other people. This statement is neither a joke, nor intended to be offensive, this information comes from serious articles.
If, for some reason, you were extremely bored and made your way through my entire post, please dump a comment or two below this. I'm interested to know what people think. Ta :)
- The idea of punishment in the bible appears to be a mixture of a response to human anger and justice, rather than pure justice. The purpose of justice is to prevent bad things happening - pain and death are simply by-products. If this is not understood then consider too that billions of people have not had access to the bible ("truth"). Any way you look at it - it's unfair.
- The idea of a devil spending all of his time trying to manipulate people into doing bad things seems ridiculous. It seems like the devil would be doing more than God, and the things the devil is accused of trying to make us do seem more likely to be a result of our natural need to survive, be warm, and reproduce.
- The creation seems to contradict any kind of evidence as to how the universe came about and its age. Also, God made some very horrible animals & diseases, not just pretty things.
- Genesis 1 tells a story that seems more like a fairy tale than anything else: talking snake, fiery sword, snakes eating dust, etc. Also God's placing the tree there in the first place, and taking revenge on descendants doesn't make any sense.
- Had the bible been inspired by God, I don't think the ignorance of the writers would have remained, e.g. four corners of the Earth & contradictions like the time of Jesus' death.
- I've heard that JW's are not meant to be friends with non-JW's, especially those who have left. I believe we should all be treated equally, regardless of our religious beliefs.
- The religion is anti-gay. I think to be anti-gay is just plain wrong - one does not choose one's sexual orientation.
- The founder of the JW religion used a pyramid to create his prophecy. No-one's explained how this works, but it makes him appear to be a bit mad.
- The Watchtower has predicted multiple comings of Jesus, and Jesus never came.
- According to the new testament (mainly Matthew), there was supposed to be some major event like the end of the world in the first century. It never happened.
- The JW's have made their own translation of the bible to suit their beliefs. The Watchtower's reason for "The word was (a) God" is not the same as their reason when they explain to Greek people.
- JW's are expected to agree with the Watchtower. They are not given the freedom to use their own intellect to determine whether something is true or not.
- There are always excuses why God does not appear to exist: he is invisible, do not put him to the test, he only talks to people in their dreams.
- If one were to develop a hypothesis as to what would happen if a loving, almighty God existed, it would fail.
- All "miracles" which happen today, are only things which might have happened anyway: Cured sickness, safe arrival, safe medical procedure. The following miracles do not happen: cars running without petrol in emergencies, amputated limbs re-appearing, etc.
- Even my most desperate prayers requesting faith and understanding do not get answered.
- The bible was written in languages which most people do not know. We do not have the originals, so thousands of mistakes / variations have crept into the manuscript copies that we have. These are then translated by people with different prejudices, beliefs, understandings, etc. The original meaning is often debatable, or very difficult to understand.
- The decision as to which books should be included in the New Testament was made by people. We have no proof that they chose the correct books.
- There is lots of research to indicate that JW's are far more prone to mental illnesses than other people. This statement is neither a joke, nor intended to be offensive, this information comes from serious articles.
If, for some reason, you were extremely bored and made your way through my entire post, please dump a comment or two below this. I'm interested to know what people think. Ta :)
My Fascination with Jehovah's Witnesses
I have a fascination with Jehovah's Witnesses. They are like little wounded birds. When you try and help them they flap their wings as hard as they can to try and get away. I love them, and wish I could help them, but there doesn't seem to be anything I can do.
In case you don't know, and I also found this a bit surprising, but Jehovah's Witnesses have a particularly high tendancy to have mental problems. This is not an insult, this is a serious comment, based on what I've found on the net. Amazing how much you come up with by googling something like "jehovah's witness mental illness".
Here's an example
So, what can we do to help these poor, little, injured birds? I don't know, but here's something I've tried... and it didn't work, because the person I tried it on almost completely ignored my questions and moved on to other things. I asked these three hypothetical questions:
1. Hypothetically, if you had a daughter, who was scientifically minded, and therefore could not make sense of your religion, and chose rather not to be involved in it, but was kind to people and animals... If God chose to kill her and save you, would you consider that to be right and just?
2. Hypothetically, if you found out that a major teaching in your religion was a lie, and you could not convince others that it was a lie, would you stay in the religion anyway, or would you leave?
3. Hypothetically, if an international committee was set up for the sole purpose of figuring out the true religion, and consisted of the most open minded and intelligent people in the world, who spent their lives evaluating various religions, and testing them to see if their claims were true, would you join the religion that they claimed was true, or would you rather trust your own mind?
In my next post I will list 19 reasons why I am not a Jehovah's Witness, which took me about an hour to think up in order to send to the same person I mentioned above.
I know no-one reads my posts, but if you are no-one, please post a comment and let me know what you think about these thoughts of mine.
In case you don't know, and I also found this a bit surprising, but Jehovah's Witnesses have a particularly high tendancy to have mental problems. This is not an insult, this is a serious comment, based on what I've found on the net. Amazing how much you come up with by googling something like "jehovah's witness mental illness".
Here's an example
So, what can we do to help these poor, little, injured birds? I don't know, but here's something I've tried... and it didn't work, because the person I tried it on almost completely ignored my questions and moved on to other things. I asked these three hypothetical questions:
1. Hypothetically, if you had a daughter, who was scientifically minded, and therefore could not make sense of your religion, and chose rather not to be involved in it, but was kind to people and animals... If God chose to kill her and save you, would you consider that to be right and just?
2. Hypothetically, if you found out that a major teaching in your religion was a lie, and you could not convince others that it was a lie, would you stay in the religion anyway, or would you leave?
3. Hypothetically, if an international committee was set up for the sole purpose of figuring out the true religion, and consisted of the most open minded and intelligent people in the world, who spent their lives evaluating various religions, and testing them to see if their claims were true, would you join the religion that they claimed was true, or would you rather trust your own mind?
In my next post I will list 19 reasons why I am not a Jehovah's Witness, which took me about an hour to think up in order to send to the same person I mentioned above.
I know no-one reads my posts, but if you are no-one, please post a comment and let me know what you think about these thoughts of mine.
Tuesday 25 January 2011
How to have a lucid dream
A lucid dream is simply one in which you're aware that you're dreaming.
I remember studying the Sun-eye method of having a lucid dream, over ten years ago, but it's really a time-consuming task. Besides preparing yourself for sleep, you have to set your alarm, wake up, read about lucid dreams for an hour and then go back to sleep. I tried it a couple of times, and had one lucid dream. One thing about the method terrified me... they say that afterwards you might wake up temporarily paralysed, unable to move anything except your eyes.
Recently I've been trying self-hypnosis mp3's and realized that there may be a self-hypnosis mp3 which can induce lucid dreams. I found "Sleep Hypnosis for Lucid Dreaming by D.Min, Mft Holly Holmes-Meredith" on Amazon.co.uk for less than £1.
I tried listening to the relaxing story every night for about four nights, with no effect except feeling very relaxed. On the fifth night I realized I was dreaming. I looked around and everything seemed to be crystal clear around me... an amazing experience, but it didn't last long as I felt myself waking up. One is supposed to try spinning, or according to the mp3, rubbing one's hands together, in order to remain asleep. As I woke up I tried spinning in my dream, but I was unable to stay there and woke up.
I tried the mp3 about three more times, and on the third time I realized I was dreaming and found myself in some country that I felt like I had travelled to before. I remembered my previous lucid dream, and tried to just relax and not see everything in high definition. I think that's what kept the dream going for a lot longer. Eventually I started waking up, and, trying to remain in my dream I would attempt to rub my hands together. Unfortunately when looking down at my hands I realized that they weren't there. I tried spinning, and I think it may have worked had I not been thirsty.
I woke up, and wanted to have a drink of water, but my body refused to move. It wasn't scary. It was simply interesting. I tried harder... nothing happened. I remembered that if one wakes up paralysed, one simply has to wriggle one's toes... but I was sort of enjoying this new experience. After about a minute I realized that my fingers were easy to move, and I got up and had a drink of water.
I remember studying the Sun-eye method of having a lucid dream, over ten years ago, but it's really a time-consuming task. Besides preparing yourself for sleep, you have to set your alarm, wake up, read about lucid dreams for an hour and then go back to sleep. I tried it a couple of times, and had one lucid dream. One thing about the method terrified me... they say that afterwards you might wake up temporarily paralysed, unable to move anything except your eyes.
Recently I've been trying self-hypnosis mp3's and realized that there may be a self-hypnosis mp3 which can induce lucid dreams. I found "Sleep Hypnosis for Lucid Dreaming by D.Min, Mft Holly Holmes-Meredith" on Amazon.co.uk for less than £1.
I tried listening to the relaxing story every night for about four nights, with no effect except feeling very relaxed. On the fifth night I realized I was dreaming. I looked around and everything seemed to be crystal clear around me... an amazing experience, but it didn't last long as I felt myself waking up. One is supposed to try spinning, or according to the mp3, rubbing one's hands together, in order to remain asleep. As I woke up I tried spinning in my dream, but I was unable to stay there and woke up.
I tried the mp3 about three more times, and on the third time I realized I was dreaming and found myself in some country that I felt like I had travelled to before. I remembered my previous lucid dream, and tried to just relax and not see everything in high definition. I think that's what kept the dream going for a lot longer. Eventually I started waking up, and, trying to remain in my dream I would attempt to rub my hands together. Unfortunately when looking down at my hands I realized that they weren't there. I tried spinning, and I think it may have worked had I not been thirsty.
I woke up, and wanted to have a drink of water, but my body refused to move. It wasn't scary. It was simply interesting. I tried harder... nothing happened. I remembered that if one wakes up paralysed, one simply has to wriggle one's toes... but I was sort of enjoying this new experience. After about a minute I realized that my fingers were easy to move, and I got up and had a drink of water.
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