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Never Say Never!
Memes
War
Start your
Atheist Lloyd collection today
Events in Processes
Why wonder what it is that atheists
"believe in"? Dozens of pages, all dedicated to ideas that promote and
uphold your human rights and natural freedoms, are available to you right
here, with a page of links to other sites so you can verify what you read.
You won't find them all without
help from the convenient
Site Map that
tells you what the various pages are about and provides links to get you
there. Don't take others' word about what atheists believe, get it from
the source and get it right so you can feel certain of your information.
They'll tell you we have no
values, or that we
copied theirs. Historians know the truth about that.
If you operate an atheist website,
or one with compatible information,
look here and
mostly
here to see if your site is listed, and
let me know if you can't find it. If you know about a site that deserves
recognition, tell
me all about it.
Natural rights are your rights to
act in your own best interests as if there were, in fact, nobody and no
governing bodies to prevent that of you, within limits imposed by others
who will be doing exactly the same, according to whatever agreements can
be made wherever there may be conflicts. Those who describe the
inhumanities that would result from absence of such bodies in our lives
are, regretfully so, most likely pretty much right in their assessments
because of the necessity for those agreements, but fail to take into
consideration those qualities that enable one to realize wherein his true
best interests lie, and what is required to support them. They also fail
to mention the atrocities that civilization has enabled humans to perform,
much of that due to the influence of various interests upon their
governments.
Criminal elements and ignorance
will always exist in societies, however they get configured, and it is
from that we must protect ourselves. People have sought to manage that by
the creation of all kinds of governments, upon which the criminal elements
they sought to suppress soon learn to prey with the help of the
ignorant
and naive. Criminal elements are not easily recognized and, just because
they are criminals, does not mean they will not act out wily schemes or
make themselves seem wholly holy to our eyes.
We have science to protect us, but
we failed to learn how to use it and have allowed ourselves to become
victimized by our own brand of modern criminals, with much support from
gangsters of the past. Beware of the man with his hands on your back,
seeming to be so supportive. You may soon find the contents of your wallet
have disappeared, and the privacy and freedoms you so recently enjoyed
have gone away right along with them, and you have been shoved forward to
lie flat on your face.
————————
More than just this web site or the
posts I make to various groups, I write books that represent a portion of
my wide-ranging interests. You can read the starting pages of some of them
(all, eventually) right on this website.
NOTE:
None of my pages are doctored
to prevent you from saving them on your hard drive for later study or
reference. My interest is to present information to you, and I feel that
limiting the
nature of your access defeats that
purpose. If the quality of my presentation is good, I hope you will
purchase some of my books, and not do so because I have made that be the
only way to lure you into that. Please help to prove me right.
————————
Reality 101
by Lloyd H. Whitling (paperback - September 2002)
"We believe Reality 101 is one of the best
independently published books on the market." Rec'd 3/4/06 in a letter
from Airleaf Publishing and Bookselling. Buy it, read it, and see for
yourself.
Read sample
pages here
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Read about NATHEISM
————————
IT'S
————————
NUDISTS/NATURISTS:
Meet others of all creeds with whom to share your
interests and lifestyle.
This site appears to be on the up
and up. If you find real reasons to disagree,
please let me know.
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I
changed my world today. I rode my bicycle!
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DEBUNKING
————————
MY BOOKS (Start your Lloyd collection
today):
First CumBax
ISBN
1-4276-0101-1
Religious
claims and their correspondent secular answers. A multitude of reasons
underpin secularity and atheism, but too few people know of any of them.
Filled with more than a hundred of those reasons and the claims opposing
them, this book holds a goldmine of secular truths. Whether atheist or
believer, buy it if you truly care about right and wrong. Read the first
chapters
here, and only buy the book if you like
what you see.
————————
The
Mad Poet Does Evolution,
an eBook in PDF format that plays on all computers, available only from
lulu.com. This eBook may contain the only
real challenge to creationism, and the only attempt to explain how the
universe most likely began from nothing and built (accreted) its own
existence. Read the first chapters
here,
and only buy the book if you like what you see.
————————
The Complete Universe of Memes,
ISBN 0595244297.
Two things seem certain in religion: One is that, if anything in religion
is true, a scientist will be who discovers it. The other is that, if and
when that happens, the religious will reject it. That is the case with
memes, the stuff from which gods are made. Read the first chapters
here,
and only buy the book if you like what you see.
————————
Reality 101, ISBN
0595218342
Like a
tree, reality develops among humans in a myriad of forms that branch from
one another, and from the main, material stem. To try to understand only
one view of it is to get it wrong. Atheists claim that gods are creations
from the human mind, yet the most useful aspects of reality are
artificial. Could that mean gods are real, and God can be shown to exist?
Read for yourself and find that out. Read the first chapters
here,
and only buy the book if you like what you see.
————————
Gran'Pa, ISBN
0595195601 Gran'Pa's mildly caustic wit gets praises from all who
read it. Insights into life, liberty, and barrels rolling downhill.
Flattened outhouses get explained, and why shotguns ought not to be fired
inside the house. Read the first chapters
here,
and only buy the book if you like what you see.
————————
The Sand Wytch of Desert Low,
ISBN 0595223915.
One source of naturism is desperate need, but our hero stays too busy
trying to hide to worry about that, only to eventually learn that the one
he was trying to hide from is the one he tried so hard to find. Read the
first chapters
here, and only buy
the book if you like what you see.
Rollicking, frolicking, action-packed humor.
————————
This World, ISBN
0595223850 War
rears its ugly head when the Tyrant of Lakeland threatens This World, and
attempts to steal souls to use as operating systems for his demons.
Read the first chapters
here, and only buy
the book if you like what you see.
————————
The Other Way, ISBN
059522394X touches on polygamy and human
relationships. Layers of bigotry and deceit abound as Jon loses his
underage girlfriend and his job, and gets beaten up by her father. Rod
falls in love with another woman, wants to keep his wife, but loses both.
The Bohunk Philosopher rescues them both and shows that lying sometimes
works. Read the first chapters
here, and only buy
the book if you like what you see.
————————
Time Loop, ISBN
0595199461
Kissing
works strange magic on Impelleti and sends him on a scary adventure to
which no end seems apparent. Doorways through time open into unexpected
predicaments from which he must figure out how to extract himself without
getting killed. Can three of one's self exist at the same time? Read the
first chapters
here, and only buy
the book if you like what you see.
————————
Daemonic Poetry,
ISBN 0595199461.
Poems by a budding atheist, written while he struggled to resolve all the
issues in his life. Read the first chapters
here,
and only buy the book if you like what you see.
————————
NEW
ISBN 1-4276-0891-1
The
Problem With Dying: A young widow
struggles to overcome problems that arose from her husband's unexpected
death. Her life is falling apart while she gets sweet-talked away from
fundamental religion into a role in porn. Were it a movie, this one would
be rated 'R' for statements some characters make that may offend some
tender sensibilities.
Read the
first chapters
here, and only buy
the book if you like what you see.
————————
Secular
(Scientific) Morality
(ISBN
1-4276-0890-3) is something certain people claim cannot exist. How
wrong can they be? Morality comes from Nature and gets taught to us by
pain. That is copied by religion, wherein "punishment" takes on the
natural role that pain occupies in Nature (which is why it is called
'natural'), which then gets perverted to accommodate a notion that being
rewarded for good deeds deserves punishment (which is unnatural, and
that's why it's called perversion). Written to defuse radical claims that
only fundamental religions create moral people. Read the first chapters
here,
and only buy the book if you like what you see.
————————
Gran'Pa
(ISBN
0595195601) says:
There's
only one real reason for why people screw up: People screw up because they
is doin' stuff.
Now,
you'd think a fella could avoid screwing up by just never doin' anything.
I am sure that, at the ending of a nice, long and peaceable life a fellow
could look back and tell hizself, "You know, I have lived a long time and
never enjoyed myself very much. I never had very much fun. I think I
really screwed up!"
—————————————
About words: words is fun to play with, an'
folks gets upset when I do that. The same word can mean opposite things,
like a river might only be a creek or a dry washed gully.
Here's how I reco'nize a place with water:
If I can throw a rock across it, it's a creek. If I can see the other
side, it's a river. If I can't, it's a lake. If I can't and it's salty,
it's an ocean. If someone calls a creek a river, that's poetry. Little
creeks play the purtiest music of 'em all.
Gran'Pa is available from
amazon.com |
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The Scientific Method
"It's only a Theory!"
by
Lloyd Harrison Whitling
Sharing space with the religious world is very much
akin to sharing space with a very large cat, such as a cougar or lion. You
know you are regarded as prey by an animal that intends to eat you,
whereas you have no intentions at all toward it except a desire to be
elsewhere and unmolested. You feel forced to defend yourself with whatever
is available, and to avoid becoming its next victim. It serves only one
purpose: to kill. You know that, if allowed to survive, you can (and will)
serve many purposes throughout your life. It will use its instinctive
emotions to drive itself to the kill; you will use, to the best of your
ability, science to develop your defense.
The one thing religion and science can agree on, is
that when the truth becomes known, religion becomes science. The reason is
in the method each uses to propose truth. The scientific basic method
follows a set of steps from inspiration toward theory, whereas religion
stops at inspiration, calls it "revealed", and converts it into dogma. We
don't start out with theory in science, nor hypothesis, but to discover
"why", "if", or "how". Hypotheses require certain steps to be climbed to
reach them, with theory being above the top step.
Step 1: At the very start, the scientist has
made an observation, been inspired by an idea, or read something he wants
to learn more about. At this point he may write a description of
it, including his best speculations and opinions, and what he may hope to
learn about it, from which he may gain a sense of where he should
go next. He may dump the idea at this point, or decide he is, after all,
interested enough to invest some of his time to learn more about
it, and will have a better idea of what it is he wants to learn.
 Step
2: His own thoughts now squared away, and with a purpose in mind, the
scientist begins his research. He will pour over journals, search
the Internet, talk to his peers to see what other people may have thought
or learned about the subject. He will assess the pros and cons of it, read
about others' experiments if there were any, and aim for a balanced notion
of all the probabilities, try to understand what might be right about what
others have done, and what might have gone wrong. He may have learned
enough by this time to realize he would be wasting his time to go farther,
or he may become excited by a flash of insight that may provide new
lead-ins to understanding.
Step 3: Only after step 2 has been completed
can a prediction be made about the outcome of all the scientist's efforts.
His statement in which he makes his prediction is called his hypothesis,
often misstated as his 'theory', something that he will get to after much
more hard, careful work and data have been assessed, sorted, culled for
flukes, evaluated, challenged and verified not only by his own efforts,
but by how closely others, in other places, have matched his results. The
hypothesis is only the beginning of a long chain of events that may
lead to a theory. Right now, he can only make a prediction about what that
theory may say.
Step 4: Now he must decide what kinds of
experimentation would be most appropriate for his hypothesis. The
nature of his hypothesis and its subject matter will limit
experimentation to only a few approaches: Will he be required to use
double-blind or triple-blind trials? Will he be able to mix some
ingredients to watch their reactions, or their effects upon something
else? Is it about a device that he will have to build in several
variations to see if any of them work as predicted? Will he have to resort
to laboratory animals because it would be too risky at this point to try
it out on people? Is there something about his hypothesis that makes it
untestable? Only after knowing the answers to questions such as those can
he begin to experiment and record his results, or decide there is
no way he can continue.
Step 5: Methodology for experimentation is
rigorously defined, and requires careful documentation of all aspects of
experiments while underway, careful handling of the data, subjects and
materials to avoid contamination from any potential sources, and careful
evaluation of any workers or assistants to assure that no prejudices may
introduce 'dirt' into the results. Only after all of that has been
completed and the experiments performed can the scientist subject the
results to an analysis. His new data will be cataloged, assessed,
sorted, culled for flukes, evaluated, challenged and verified much the
same as for his development of the original hypothesis. Does his data
support his hypothesis, counter it, or make a neutral statement? He may
decide that his unsatisfactory results render the experiments invalid, the
hypothesis invalid, or that he realizes another kind of experiment is
required to bolster his results, whether contrary to or in support of his
hypothesis. This step may take years to accomplish, or may never arrive at
a satisfactory end, even though several scientists may be working
independently on the problems by this time.
Step 6: Only after all the foregoing can the
scientist arrive at a conclusion which may now, if the results
warrant it, be regarded as a full-fledged theory. While even the
dictionary supports the naming of assumptions, hypotheses, speculations,
opinions and conjecture as theories, doing so gives them a status they do
not deserve, as you can plainly see from reading this, and demeans the
value of the scientist's efforts, the scientists themselves, and science
in general.
A good case could be made, of course, to show that
may be the purpose behind it.
The methods of science and religion are, of
course, widely divergent. Science investigates objects and phenomena to
find its information, using a evaluative process known as objective.
Religion gains its information from scriptures and apologia while
using an evaluative process known as subjective. Both may start out
from an assumption, but their assumptions will be derived from the two
vastly different evaluative processes. While I may feel reluctant to not
bite my tongue while writing about such subjects, as have so many in the
past, I cannot feel apologetic where open expression is the only valid way
to present the truth, and where religionists seldom repay their opponents
in kind.
Science and religion serve vastly different
purposes, also:
Science works to be self-correcting while
religion works to be self-endorsing. The aim of science is to gain true
information and keep it corrected according to whatever it uncovers in its
ongoing quest. The religious get disgusted with science's constant
updating, and believe their 'truths' are perpetually valid and must be
spread unchanged and unchallenged throughout the world (with a few
exceptions, of course). Continued below….
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If you want to know how atheism works, send your
name, address and a check or M.O. for $10 to:
Colligion
P. O. Box 5
Dickson, TN 37056
You will receive a little book, How to be an
Atheist in a plain envelope in immediate response. Do NOT
send cash: Stuff gets lost in the mail, or misdirected.
|
continued from above….
To defend their claims of immutability,
religion has developed a process called apologia, wherein the
disparities between doctrine and reality get explained by religious
leaders and others familiar with the scriptures and with religious
history. This has often led to major rifts, during which a segment of
the membership either breaks off because it has adopted the new
apologia, or because it has refused to. That is how all the divisions
have formed among the Arabic-derived Abrahamic religions (mainly Judaism
from which Xianity and Islam branched) and then formed subdivisions
within themselves, with seemingly endless branching. That serves to
explain why some sects
of some
cults
seem to laughably out of touch and maybe even
dangerously so, whereas others seem to possess a firm grasp of reality.
Science tends to avoid that problem and, over the
long haul, has demonstrated itself to be a unifying process. Philosophy
is, of course, to science what theosophy is to religion. While religion
tends to honor those theosophers with which it happens to agree, science
tends to drop erroneous philosophies, another matter at which
religionists point with smirks on their faces. As erroneous philosophies
get banished from prominence, they will of course retain their
adherents, who will struggle with religionlike fervor to regain their
once favorable status. New philosophies will sooner or later take their
place, and over time even the speculations of science's distant admirers
gains increasing rectitude.
The quest for evidence emphasizes differences
between the scientific approach to finding truth and the religious.
Objectivity demands the kind of evidence and materials that can be
directly examined and discussed. Mathematical formulae may be applied in
many cases, especially in the stage where predictability gains
importance, so that after finishing the testing tangible evidence is
required to match results with reality.
Religionists may try to imitate that process at
times when they wish to appear 'scientific', the difference being that
they will apply numbers to their apologia, or to their assumptions, but
have seldom run any actual experiments or any kinds of tests to validate
their scripture-based reasoning. Religion deals with the kinds of
incorporeal subjects that will remain forever untestable, and so will
struggle forever to demonstrate its claims as having merit that must, at
best, be taken for granted. Such claims have mostly been grandfathered
into our psyches, to reside there as troublesome
memeplexes
that haunt us with their effects more than with any
actual presences, so that no one knows quite how to dispel them, and none
quite agree whether anyone should.
Other authors, much more knowledgeable about such
things than I'll ever be, have written what amounts to tomes about the
subject of memes, but have yet to stir up any kind of major rebellion
against them, or even much controversy about them. People feign
disinterest, and scientists decry the absence of tangible material. For
their lack of a tangible presence memes might as well be gods, and for
their untouchability, they may very well be regarded as such, somewhere
deep within some hidden location where mental bowels may be cleansing such
careful minds of pollution. continued below….
Discussion groups:
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OTHER SITES:
MEMETICS:
http://barehombre.tripod.com/memes/
NATURIST POLITICS:
http://barehombre.tripod.com/
NATURISM:
http://www.geocities.com/barehombre/
PICTURE SITES: PAGE DOWN
MOTIVATION--
http://community.webshots.com/album/2984532SbqhxCnYTb
POETRY AND SLOGANS:
http://community.webshots.com/album/26764905cYOzwOOUuK
SCIENCE:
http://community.webshots.com/album/74456720RNfqJL
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THE SECULAR DIRECTORY
GODS and DEMONS
—————————————————————————————————
…continued from above….
A historical appraisal will show that all of this is
not lost to religion. Due to the effects of advancing apologia, religions
today (especially in the advanced cultures) vastly differ from even as
little as a century ago, that being enough lapse of time so all the oldest
adherents have passed on, so the newest members are affected less from
edicts of the distant past than they are by the science and technology of
the present. This time lag may seem advantageous to some, who may consider
it to be a kind of 'safety factor' that keeps humankind from rushing too
headlong into a future wherein we may lose control.
Religionists who appear at your stoop to argue you
into their flock will generally be from the most aggressive breed of their
cult, sent on a mission by their leaders to face the world with their
testimonials and messages. They may actually know little about their
creeds, may know little about their scriptures, and all they may know of
science has come from the apologia they have taken in doses for however
long they have been members of their sect. Here is where you get to
observe the religious method of science, and learn the details of the
differences. You will also, after a few bouts of such observations,
understand why it fails as science and does not deserve the name.
Religious Science draws upon ancient writings
for its source of knowledge, which in turn depends upon apologia for
explanation. In most instances of such writings, no one knows the author's
name, nor anything about him, except to accredit 'God' for the work. Such
writings most likely passed from person to person through word of mouth or
as the result of priestly efforts according to the religion, and
eventually got scripted by enterprising people who may have had their own
reasons for doing so. Too, most of today's religions inherited their
creeds from a series of older religions and modified them to suit their
purposes or to settle disputes, or both.
Such settlements were the beginning of apologia for
each religion, and so the scriptures to which they refer contain traces
and wholesale documents as products of that apologia. Apologia serves to
justify the religion, never to uncover truth. Religious science serves,
not to uncover truth, but to find ways to defend the religious doctrines
so they will escape all appearances of tarnish.
You can perform a little personal experiment to
verify that for yourself, if you would care to do so. Choose a disputed
subject, especially one in which you feel interested. Pose a question
about it, perhaps one you have been exposed to a bit of controversy about.
Apply the scientific methods to that question (you may need to restate it
to do so) and see how far you can get with it.
Next, apply the religious version of science to it,
which is to evaluate it according to scriptures and doctrine. Can you find
anything at all about it in the scriptures, or does what you find require
apologia to even apply to the question at all. Does most of the religion's
information come from the scriptures?— or from the apologia that serves to
justify religion's views? Once you have made those determinations, subject
them to objective science's methods one more time, and see if they hold
up. Are religion's decrees testable?— or, were they stated in some way
that served to prevent that? Can you make a prediction from them that can
be tested in some fashion? If so, does that prediction pass muster, or did
the religious decree turn out to be counterproductive? Can you find any
truly testable reasons for disparities between the religious statement and
the one made by science? If need be, can you find your own questions and
work to discover their answers?
Do so, and one prediction you can rely on is that
you will learn why this century's science will be the next century's
religion, thanks to apologia.
Comparative examples:
1. When the levees broke during the Katrina
hurricane, a religious statement was issued that the flood had resulted
from the presence of homosexuals in New Orleans. The objective statement
was that the levees had not been constructed or maintained in a manner
required for them to withstand the force of the predicted category four
hurricane. The objective prediction resulted from a study of natural
events that led up to the hurricane; the after-the-fact religious
statement was derived from religious sanctions against homosexuality. How
can you decide which is true?
2. In the same year, June of 2006, a tsunami
killed tens of thousands (as many as 230,000) of human beings, many of
them vacationers who visited the affected islands at that time. Those who
escaped thanked God for sparing them. Using the same religious standards
that were applied to New Orleans, why do you think they escaped while the
thousands whose loss they mourned did not? Also applying the standards for
New Orleans, for what were they punished, and were all those who perished
guilty of something of which the spared were not? Could it, too, simply be
an inevitable natural disaster that happened in much the fashion and for
the reasons that scientists described?
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NOTES:
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