Tag Archives: nature

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Silence Is Golden

Silence is golden.

“The universe,” wrote astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson, “is under no obligation to make sense to you,” and, for the most part, it doesn’t, to anyone. Beyond the incomprehensibility of quantum mechanics—and our inability to reconcile the main branches of physics—we’ve only managed to discover, after 500 years of groping in the dark, a meager 5 percent of the observable universe. The other 95 percent, physicists tell us, is composed of imperceptible dark matter and dark energy, surmised to exist based only on its impact on the small sliver of reality that has managed to sift its way through our pitiable and corruptible senses.

Basing grand proclamations about the ultimate nature of the universe—including the existence or nonexistence of God—on this shaky and incomplete foundation is unjustifiable and, frankly, utterly foolish. Isn’t it clear, that we’re all, for want of a better phrase, just making shit up?

As long as your belief system allows my belief system to live, we can be friends.  However, if your belief system makes my belief system wrong or evil, I fear we will never walk this earth together in peace and harmony. 

The moment we step past what is immediately given and begin speculating about the “ultimate nature” of things, we invite agitation, disagreement, and distress. Better, then, to withhold judgment altogether.

 

I’ve got nothing else to say.

Do you have anything to say?

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Confirmation, And Conformation, Bias

If you go looking for something that you expect to find – that you’ve been told, over and over and over, that you will find – that you want to find – that you need to find….  You will probably find it!  😮

Despite there being naturalistic explanations for almost every claim, Christian Apologists insist that “God” is responsible for everything – everything good that is.  If it’s bad, apparently we cause it.  I’m sure that the lady who wrote the following is very comforted by it, but I have some serious problems with her assumptions and definitions.

It really is a simple argument that, understanding God as the greatest conceivable being and our creator, seems to me irrefutable. Here it is in syllogism form:

  1. The moral law is founded on God’s nature, i.e. something is good if it aligns with who God is.
  2. Because God is the greatest conceivable being, all good qualities find their perfection in him and every expression of his goodness is much greater than any of us could ever express.
  3. Love is a good, moral virtue.
  4. Therefore, God loves and his expression of it is much greater than ours.

Morals do not prove God.  God proves morals.  Show me evidence of such an entity, and I will accept its right to assign “Morals.”  Until then, your morals are merely the mostly-agreed-on communal ethics of individuals, and a social species, attempting to survive and prosper.  The morals of the Biblical God align with slavery, genocide, rape, favoritism, and stoning independent children to death.

There is no indication that “the greatest conceivable being” exists, or needs to exist.  There is no indication that such a hypothetical entity would be ‘our creator.’  All indications are that any such theoretical being would not be the Christian God that she imagines.  I’m not moving the goalposts; I’m just trying to keep up with this argument as it flounders.

‘Love is a good moral virtue’ is a soft, sweet, mushy, marshmallow-type statement that even non-believers agree with.  Like ‘morals,’ it doesn’t prove God’s existence.  That requires something stronger and more rigid.

If you keep repeating the same, tired, inane statement often enough, sooner or later you will come to accept it as truth.  Government calls that brainwashing.  The Church calls it catechism.

Jesus loves me, this I know
‘Cause my pastor told me so.

All the repetition, and desperate hope, and circular thinking, don’t make it true.

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Fibbing Friday #157

I recently told Pensitivity that, despite always being a week late, I had not missed publishing a Fibbing Friday post since March 15, 2022.  I put a sometimes humorous descriptive title on each of them.  I am running out of smartass titles.  Three years X 52 weeks = 156 posts.  I have begun numbering them.  The occasional title will not interrupt the sequence.

Pensitivity101 wanted some more definitions last week. Hope you can have some fun with these.

1. Doohickey

This is the new sport that is already starting to replace pickleball, because the name makes more sense.

2. Donnybrook

The small stream that runs behind the grandson’s – and great-grandson’s home.  A virtual Natural Encyclopedia for an intelligent, inquisitive 4-year-old.  He must be carefully supervised, but it is full of ducks, geese, frogs, crawdads, lilacs, daisies, violets, and Dead (non-stinging) Nettles.

3. Dingleberry

A term of affection and acceptance for Flat Earthers.

4. Dingus

He’s the office brain-trust who comes to work on the short bus.  He’s actually a nice guy, and accomplishes a lot of carefully-explained-to-him work, but he thinks that manual labor is the Mexican groundskeeper.

5. Drub

This is one of the new bathing apparatuses, where a little door opens in the side, so that handicapped people don’t have to step up and over the edge to have a shower or bath.

6. Dreck

As Donald Trump begins his second term in office, and the average IQ continues to decline, (I get the feeling that those two are somehow related.) marketers and advertisers are busy convincing us that our teeth have to be printer-paper white, and we need to use Full-Body deodorants, or we won’t get laid.  Dreck is shampoo for bald guys.

7. Diggity

The sub-genus for my two Scottish terriers.  I don’t know what puts bigger holes in my back yard – moles – or my dogs, trying to get at them.

8. Dook

This is the new term for a digital novel.

9. Dibbly

This is what a putter at a miniature golf course was called, early in the 20th Century, before golfers stopped using Scottish Gaelic, and began speaking English.

10. Dinkum

That’s the cotton candy that you can buy at Australian fairs.  They’re always talking about their fair dinkum.

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Made In Heaven Humor

The wife whined, “How can you talk to me like that?  I’ve given you the best years of my life.”
I said, “Yeah?  And who made them the best years??”

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At an international conference, a survey was distributed, asking delegates what their thoughts were on the scarcity of food in the rest of the world.  The African delegates didn’t understand ’food.’  The Canadian delegates didn’t understand ‘scarcity,’ and the American delegates didn’t understand ‘the rest of the world.’

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Why are the pyramids in Egypt??
Because they were too heavy for the English to ship home.

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New-Age Terminology

A Father is a banker provided by nature.
A boss is a guy who’s always early when you’re late, and always late when you are early.
A smile is a curve that can set a lot of things straight.
Rumor is news that travels at the speed of sound.
Dictionary is the only place where divorce comes before marriage.
College is a place where some pursue learning, and others learn pursuing.
Ecstasy is a feeling you are going to feel when you feel a feeling you have never felt before.
Office is a place to go to relax from your hectic home life.
A yawn is the only time some married men get to open their mouth.
Etc. is a sign to make others think that you know more than you do.
Committee – Individuals who can do nothing, who sit as a group to decide that nothing can be done collectively
Classic is a book that everyone praises, but nobody reads.
Marriage is an agreement where a man loses his Bachelor Degree, and a woman gains her Masters.
Worry is interest paid on trouble, before it falls due.
Experience is the name that men give to their mistakes.
Tears are the hydraulic force by which masculine power is defeated by feminine power.
Atom bomb –an invention to end all inventions
Philosopher is a fool who torments himself during his life so that he will be spoken well of, after he’s dead.
Optimist is a person who starts taking a bath if he accidently falls into a river.
A pessimist is a person who says that O is the last letter in ZERO, rather than the first letter of OPPORTUNITY.
Miser is a person who lives poor, so that he can die rich.
A criminal is a guy no different from the rest…. except he got caught.
Politician – one who shakes your hand before elections, and your confidence after
A doctor is a person who kills your ills with pills, but kills you with his bills.
(Only, not in social-medicine Canada)
Swiped-Out is a debit or credit card that has been rendered useless because the magnetic strip is worn away from frequent usage.  (And it only happens when you have only 23¢ in your pocket)
Starter is a first marriage which ends in divorce.  A marriage with no kids, no property, and no regrets.
Mouse potato – The online, wired generation’s answer to couch potato.  ARE YOU ONE??

***

 

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Three Cubed Fibbing Friday

I scream – You scream – The Police come – things are awkward.  I theme – You theme.  Pensitivity101 understands that this week has no theme at all and is just a mish-mash of silly questions inviting you to give sillier answers.

1.What is liquid gold?

It’s that first, really cold beer, when you finish mowing the lawn on a hot, sunny, late-July afternoon.

2.What is housemaid’s knee?

It is a joint affliction suffered when you convince your wife/girlfriend to wear the sexy costume, and polish your Hummer, but forget to provide a cushion, or other padding.

3.Why is the Eiffel Tower so named?

‘Cause it’s a really big, tall thing that towers over Paris.  It is 300 meters (984 feet) tall.  I’ve stopped asking “How stupid can some Americans be?” because they’re taking it as a challenge.  In a recent meme twitter list, one of them claimed that the 154 meter (504 foot) replica in Las Vegas, was built first, and the French just copied it.  I’m surprised I haven’t heard, “I live in Paris, Texas.  Them Frenchies just copied that, too!”  😳

4.Can elephants swim?

They can, but they take up so much space that they’ve been permanently banned from the pool.  Other than Dumbo, none of them are allowed to fly either.

5.What is a pot hole?

That’s the ceramic throne, otherwise known  as a toilet, where we used to flush our stash if/when the cops raided, back before Canada decriminalized Mother Nature’s sedative.

6.What is a woolly pulley?

It’s a young kid who dragged their pet lamb on a leash, three miles, in an Easter Parade.

7.What is a tap washer?

Like a designated driver, he is the (perhaps) soberest, or most paranoid, OCD, frat partier, who cleans and disinfects the bung to prevent COVID and other diseases, when it is changed from one keg to another, at a toga party.

8.Why do we have warts on our fingers but corns on our toes?

Because God had just invented Magic Mushrooms, and wanted to try them out – strictly for quality-control purposes.  He said, ‘Hold my ‘Shrooms.  I’m gonna create some Hoomin Beans.’  Our nose runs, and our feet smell.

9.What is a pendulum?

My amply-endowed, Double-D wife has two of them, when she refuses to wear even a light, cotton sports bra on hot summer days.  She recently told me that she had seen something odd between her breasts – her navel.

10.Where will you find a pupil and iris?

At a school for landscaping and gardening.

I sometimes stay out late, in the company of good friends and much dark ale, and when I return home the truth is not in me.  Honestly though, there’ll be a great post on Monday and the hangover should be gone.  😀

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Flash Fiction #265

PHOTO PROMPT © Dale Rogerson

UNDER THE BIG…. DISAPPOINTMENT

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, and all non-specifically-gendered LGBTQ+ persons – welcome to the first All-P.C. Circus.

Rather than cotton candy, hot-dogs and caramel corn, we are providing kale salads and frozen, whipped tofu in a chia-based cone.

Instead of trained seals and lions, we have a solar-powered Jumbotron, showing happy animals living in harmony in the wild.

Midgets have been replaced by stature-challenged roustabouts holding colorful posters showing global warming and extinct species.

Our daring high-diver will leap from his lofty ivory tower into two feet of WOKE.

No Snowflakes will be melted during the presentation of our show.

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Go to Rochelle’s Addicted to Purple site and use her Wednesday photo as a prompt to write a complete 100 word story.

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I’m Philosophical About It

Bias And Presupposition

Like the student who was asked by his English teacher if he would begin stacking firewood in the middle of a pile, many people, (especially Christian Apologists) who believe that they are deep thinkers, unwittingly start in the middle of an argument.

A young writer who considered himself to be a (at least developing) philosopher, posed the following questions.  While innocent-enough looking, they are fraught with assumptions and beliefs.
What is the nature of the universe?
What is man’s place in the universe?
What is good and what is evil?
What is the nature of God?
What is fate and what is free will?
What is soul and what is immorality?
What is the order of man and state?
What is education?
What is mind and matter?
What is ideas and what is thinking?

What Is The Nature Of The Universe?

The Universe has no “Nature!”  It is a brute fact which each of us must endure in our own ways.  It is supremely indifferent and insensible to the wants and needs of any person, in the same way that we are unaware and uncaring of a red blood cell in our veins – more so, because we at least can become aware of a drop of blood, while the Universe sails serenely on, completely unaffected and unaltered, despite our actions.  There is no intrinsic purpose or meaning to the Universe.  Any ‘meaning’ is only one which each of us imbues it with.

All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players!

What is Man’s Place in the Universe?

Here is the first place where the presuppositions become obvious.  There is no Cosmic airline hostess to escort us to our preordained seat, from which we may not move.  People who ask questions like this often assume that our place will be in First Class, when in fact, we are lucky to get a spot in coach, and not be stuck in the Baggage compartment.

‘My place’ in the Universe is in front of my computer, trying to understand people’s thoughts and actions.  Your ‘place’ will probably be somewhere else.  Each (wo)man’s place, and each group of (wo)men’s place, is wherever we strive and succeed in making it.

What is good, and what is evil?

Good and evil are imaginary concepts, dreamed up by people who want to feel good about themselves, their lifestyle and their choices.  What they do is good – what you do is evil.  I have even had self-righteous folks who admit that “you” did good things, but you did them for the wrong reasons.

Good is what is beneficial to me, and evil is anything which causes me loss or pain.  This definition applies to everyone, so there are countless definitions of “Good” and “Evil.”  The only commonality is when evolution-caused empathy makes it apply to larger and larger groups of people.

Hitler did not think that he was doing evil when he invaded Poland, or executed Jews and Gypsies.  He was trying to improve the standard of living for him, and his German people.  The victors write the History.  Aside from becoming psychopathic about it, his main problem was that his field of empathy was not wide enough.

What is the nature of God?

This is another assumption, like the one above, of the nature of the Universe.  At least the Universe can be observed.  First, prove that God is real, then we’ll discuss/argue His nature.  Either He does not exist, or He is the winner of the longest game of Hide And Seek ever.  The Old Testament portrays Him as a vicious, vengeful, spiteful, capricious, contradictory, ill-focused, incoherent, destructive old man, while the New Testament shows Him as a petulant child.

What is Fate, and what is free will?

Fate is the delusional excuse that ‘believers’ of all stripes give to the evidence that the Universe is supremely indifferent to them.  It is almost always applied negatively.  If they win a lottery, it’s egotistic entitlement.  If they lose – “I guess it’s just Fate.”  Call it fate, luck, karma, God, Satan – they all operate at the exact frequency as blind, random chance.

If God exists, free will is another delusion that does not, and cannot exist.  God knows the future, and there is no deviation from His perfect plan.  If God does not exist, free will looks a lot like this.

What is the soul, and what is immorality?

The soul is another imaginary assumption.  There have been a number of, both scientific and non-scientific, studies searching for it, and the results have been universally negative.  If it is anything different from ‘consciousness’ (which is another big, not-completely-understood phenomenon), no-one has been able to demonstrate it.

Like ‘Good’ and ‘Evil’ above, morality/immorality are subjective, man-made concepts, invented by power-hungry religious leaders, anxious to have and hold control over their obedient followers.  What is moral now, was not moral then.  What is moral here, is not moral there.

What is the order of man and state?

What is the meaning of this question?  These deep, ‘philosophical’ concepts are deteriorating into chaos and confusion.

Man came first, and when groups of men became numerous enough, they invented the concept of ‘state.’  Is he asking if the individual man should be more important than the state?  Clear, concise communication should be the first order of business.

What is education?

Why does he ask?  Did he not receive enough to know?  Does this person, who wishes to discuss philosophy, not have a good enough grasp of language to do so?

The act or process of imparting or acquiring general knowledge, developing the powers of reasoning and judgment, and generally of preparing oneself or others intellectually for mature life.  Modern usage generally assumes the transmission (or guidance of transmission) of knowledge from one person to another, but there are those who ‘educate’ themselves – known as autodidactics.

What is mind and matter?

If you don’t mind, then it doesn’t matter.

The mind is a delusion of self.  It is the mostly non-physical, bio-electrical, neurological process of the physical brain.

Matter is also an illusion, and a delusion.  While it looks and feels solid and strong, it is really 99.999% empty space.  Infinitesimal particles group together to form, what used to be called, The Basic Building Blocks – protons, electrons and neutrons.  Different numbers of protons dance around each other to form atomic nuclei.  Different numbers of electrons orbit around these nuclei at relative distances that make the Sun and Pluto look like close friends.

Despite the apparent distance, the electrons whirl around the center so fast that, no matter what side other atoms approach from, the electrons are ‘always there,’ shunting them away.  Various atoms get together to form molecules, but even there, they are none too cosy, leaving a lot more empty space.

Different numbers and arrangements of particles and atoms give different pieces of matter different feels, looks, and properties – but they are all made up of the same basic little bits.  What are these basic bits made up of, you ask?  Tune in to the TED Talk next week, when the smartest scientist in the world says, “Beats the Hell outta me!  We’re still trying to figure that out.”

What are ideas, and what is thinking?

I have no idea, and I was thinking that someone should have checked with a dictionary, which says that IDEAS are:

any conception existing in the mind as a result of mental understanding, awareness, or activity.
a thought, conception, or notion
an impression
an opinion, view, or belief

Thinking is:

Having a conscious mind, to some extent of reasoning, remembering experiences, making rational decisions, etc.
Employing one’s mind rationally and objectively in evaluating or dealing with a given situation

Ideas are formed in the mind by the process of thinking, which is the action of electrons running around in the brain’s neurons, and leaping the synapses between them.  Serious, professional scientists are still studying the brain and the mind, but despite considerable investigation, are still not entirely sure how it all works.

If our amateur philosopher wanted to credit a God for this, or any part of the above, no indication, much less proof, has ever been found.  If he wanted deeper or broader information, his communication skills appear lacking.  He seems to have ended up right where he started – in the middle, and in a muddle.

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Flash Fiction #238

PHOTO PROMPT – © Rochelle Wisoff-Fields

BOTTLED UP

They remove half the tables, stare out that huge window, and complain about being bottled up.  What about me??  I view Nature through two layers of glass, and I’m stuck in this dispenser, like a genie.

Shut up Sugar!  At least your glass is smooth.  Poor Pepper and I are confined in these tiny, faceted shakers.  We see outdoors only as fractals.

Hey!  My plastic envelope is translucent.  I only see shadows until some fat guy grabs me by the tail, jams his thumb up my spine, and squeezes me out onto French fries.  I’d love to be bottled up.

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Go to Rochelle’s Addicted to Purple site and use her Wednesday photo as a prompt to write a complete 100 word story.

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I promised myself that I would not do any COVID19 Flash Fictions, but three of the four voices in my head told me to do it.

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Flash Fiction #179

alone

PHOTO PROMPT © Renee Heath

A MAJORITY OF ONE

I’m glad the wives agreed to this weekend away.  They probably think we’re just drinking beer, and telling fart jokes.  I love my wife, but…. my ears were tired.  The average woman uses twice as many words in a day as a man.

It’s so nice to be out here all by myself with Nature, – uh, and you guys…. Whuh??  Okay!  I’ll be quiet.  I know how.  One time, as a kid, I almost starved.  Wouldn’t tell my parents I was hungry.  Pass me another beer, willya?  I think those beans we had for supper are startin’ to come through.

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Click above to hear Eric Carmen extol his solitude, and go to Rochelle’s Addicted to Purple site and use her Wednesday photo as a prompt to write a complete 100 word story.

Friday Fictioneers

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Flash Fiction #28

Hydrangeas with Ice

 

‘Gripe, gripe, grumble, bitch’

“Just look at that.  Not only are all the flowers dead and dried up, but now they’re all coated with ice.”

“There’s no use complaining dear.  It’s Nature’s plan.  Summer turns to winter, and all the plants die off and turn brown.  Next spring they’ll all be lush and green again.  It’s called the Cycle of Life.”

“That’s easy for you to say honey.  You’re from the Upper Michigan Peninsula – but you married a Southern Gentleman.  This is Atlanta!  Damn those Canadians and their polar vortexes and their Arctic jet streams!”

‘Grumble, gripe, bitch, bitch’

Go to Rochelle’s Addicted to Purple site and use her Wednesday photo as a prompt to write a complete 100 word story.