4/1/99    Since we keep lifting the lid on that Christian can of worms, let's just dump the whole can and get it over with. Let's talk about EVOLUTION. Did God create man, did evolution create man, or is God simply evolving? First of all, let's not confuse this with DARWINISM. Darwin spent too many years overstating the obvious, and probably did the most to taint popular Christian opinion on the subject with his repugnant implications that we are all just "hairless apes". This certainly causes the human ego defense system to rear it's ugly head. I've even been told that every anthropological artifact ever discovered are actually "fakes" put here by legions of Satan to undermine our belief in God. When my eyes glaze over from this kind of talk and it's apparent that I'm not getting it, I am reassured that this is in fact true because 'the Bible says so'. Well call me dense 'cause my eyes are still glazed over. I thought the Bible was the written word of God, not a back issue of National Geographic. We need to loosen up on the translation a little, especially when it comes to the english language. We don't even have a pronoun for the word "God". "IT" sounds so impersonal, "SHE" is totally out of the question, so we're stuck with "HE", which automatically creates the subconscious notion that God has a penis (and a rather large one I'm sure). Attached to this is a whole host of human bio-chemical neural attributes that make us think "HE" has the same emotional framework as us mortals. Such literalism has also prompted the notion that the universe is actually less than 20,000 years old, and that scientists have conspired all these years to cover up the carbon-dating "hoax" to preserve their credibility. First of all, carbon-dating is not all that complicated. It involves measuring the half-life of isotopes which DOES NOT CHANGE no matter when or where you are. Secondly, carbon-dating has nothing whatsoever to do with determining the distance of objects, which is how the age of the universe is estimated. Doppler effect spectral shift shows the speed and direction of stars (light stretches and compresses just like any other wave), which shows distance by calculating movement relative to other stars. If you can see an object that is 1 million light years away then it has to be at least that old to even be visible since the speed of light DOES NOT CHANGE no matter when or where you are, and the recent creationist theory that God created "light-in-transit" makes no sense to me because I think, if nothing existed before, where is the light in transit from? I try to believe there are 2 sides to every argument and that it's all a matter of perspective, but no matter how hard you believe the sun revolves around the earth, it doesn't. Debunking evolution by refusing to acknowledge basic high school physics is not only futile, it's irresponsible. That's what you get for trying to mix religion with church. Too many "sectual perversions". Again, I think the problem is confusing evolution with Darwinism. And not blaming Darwin (who was a Christian) for having his ideas used as ammo by both sides in an argument he was not even addressing. He studied the mechanics of adaptation, not the origin of those mechanics. You can believe God created the Universe and you can believe the Big Bang created the Universe, but it's most likely that God created the Big Bang, so what's all the fuss about? I see the entire universe as a SINGLE EXPONENTIAL PROCESS, from big bang to big crunch and back again, like a ball hooked to a rubber band that stretches as far as it can go in one direction, experiences a very brief moment of perfect rest, then snaps back to the opposite side, back and forth and so on. If you think of time itself as the elastic, where the ball is at the center and the rubber band is completely slack, velocity is at it's highest (and relative time at it's lowest tension). At each end of the stretch, where the ball reaches that brief state of rest, velocity is at it's lowest (and relative time is at it's highest tension). Sorry Albert. Put another way, it's like God walks between 2 perfectly parallel mirrors facing each other. The images replicate in both directions forever and are exactly the same on both sides while exactly opposite at the same time. We exist as the infinite images and time is the light itself (okay Albert, I'm really sorry about that one). But back to the subject at hand, why some folks are offended by the fact that we are just a nano-second of manifestation in this process is beyond me. It's got to be the ape-thing. Primates and early man were just links in the chain like everything else, and if it's a matter of "close genetic proximity" then consider the concept of evolution as 3-dimensional as opposed to straight line gene-stacking. Think of it like the inverse square law where as the universe seeks to perceive itself through fragmentation, there are close proximities that occur within the dispersion that may or may not be directly related. If you were to trace the genealogy of any life form through every single parent/child connection clear back to the beginning of life on Earth, you would find that it's not so much evolution as it is mutation by interaction , especially when you trace it all the way back to the single and multi-cellular level. You can break it down all the way from animal/vegetable to genus to species to race all the way down to mother/child, where the INDIVIDUAL is a sub-process unto himself (or herself). If this sounds too "mechanical" think of it as simple REINCARNATION. No, I don't mean your aunt dies and comes back as a cow. Think of reincarnation not as one individual having many lives , but as one life having many individuals . Thinking of this as three dimensional makes it nearly impossible to differentiate between linear proximity and "surrounding" proximity. Chimp DNA is 96% identical to human DNA, however the common sewer rat is closest at 97%. That doesn't mean we evolved from rats or that we'll reincarnate into rats. It just means that evolution/reincarnation isn't about connecting the dots, it's about a nearly infinite number of dotted layers connected geometrically, the Universe experiencing itself one dot at a time, all dots simultaneously. So, if reincarnation is merely fragmentation of a single entity perceiving itself, then does this mean that when we die we're done? This may in fact be the case, but I choose not to believe so. Think of the body's primary purpose being to move the brain from one place to another. Our five senses' primary purpose to gather input for the brain, which is completely closed off in it's protective housing. The brain itself is like a massive computer but with no hard drive, it's RAM kept in tact by a continuous power source (what is it when we're sleeping, 'battery backup'?). When the computer is shut down, all the information in it's RAM is lost, unless it is has been backed-up on an external disk drive. Well, if it's true that we are just components of a single entity then nothing really dies, and even without hard drives we're at least on the NETWORK and retained by some grand spiritual AUTOSAVE program. Even if there is no "autosave" at least the PROGRAMMER retains all knowledge of the program and what it did. And who knows? Maybe these memories are stored in their own little DIRECTORY FOLDER and can still exist as individual entities and interact with all the other "dead files". Okay, I admit that is the silliest analogy I've come up with yet, but I guess what I'm going for here is some common ground for evolutionism/darwinism/creationism/reincarnationism by relating the universe through physics, metaphors and maybe just a little humor. There's no reason why scientists and fundamentalists should be polarized. Just because they disagree doesn't mean they're not on the same side, and that side is that of knowledge and the pursuit of truth. So again, what's all the fuss about? I suppose the big issue is what our schools are teaching our kids. Should they teach evolution? Sure why not. How about Creationism? Sure why not. Intelligent design? Go for it. Shinto, Zen, Buddism? I say give it all to them. It's not so much what you teach as it is how you teach it. Just let children know up front that NO ONE has all the answers, and that they will have to find their own way when they get older. We can at least give them the widest cultural diversity as possible to draw from when that time comes. And no matter what beliefs they choose, so long as those beliefs center around loving each other instead of killing each other, I think it'll be okay and we can all put these silly arguments to bed once and for all.

•  CREATIONISM