Science Goes Religious... unwillingly

It's been happening for over forty years. A scientist named Peter Higgs claims there is a "god" particle which appeared just after the Big Bang. But, Higgs, an Atheist, thinks the "god" notion is just foolishness. In fact, he's just making a point that there is a place after the Big Bang that created a field that draws particles toward it made these able to bond, and thereby produced planets, stars, moons- the universe as we know it.

Higgs often gets credit for proving there is a "Greater Power" than life itself- although he doesn't make any qualms about telling his students in Edinburgh, nor the press, that the idea that this is proof of a deity or all-knowing, all powerful being is simpleton thinking. He is only pointing out that due to his theory, the comprehension of mass which developed after the Big Bang finally makes clear scientific sense.

Higgs Boson has been in theory since 1964. He will finally get the opportunity to test his theory. According to AFP reporter Patrick Baert, "The thousands of scientists who work there have spent years preparing for the experiment which will deploy the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) -- essentially the world's biggest atom-smasher -- in a bid to recreate the conditions of the 'Big Bang' when the universe is deemed to have been created."

The elder gentleman of science states he will celebrate the results with a bottle of Champagne, provided the group in Chicago testing on their own collider don't reach results first. There will be no church services, nor ritual of religious faith.

The most interesting thing regarding the response to Higgs' theory is the idea that these experiments will create some sort of black hole or apocalyptic result. This of course is a notion that anyone uneducated, and unaware would jump to, and is simply ridiculous. The scientists are well versed in what the OFF button looks like, and have worked in the field of physics long enough to extract science fiction from facts. Doctor Who will not be needed to save the planet this time.

Within the last forty-five years, major theories of science have become day-to-day facts. From the discovered paths of electrons to string theory, the greatest minds of our world have breached the boundaries of limitations set forth by any notion of gods or "outer beings". Those here on this planet, from Higgs, to Tuana, to Harding, to Pickering, and yes, even to Hawking, are truly the masters of the universe.

http://public.web.cern.ch/Public/Welcome.html

Adding RatRoomTV to the World..

 

I haven't posted in a while because there are so many things going on lately. The biggest one- The book- is back on track now that we have an editor assigned. Whatever the title ends up being, people are invited to godlessgrief.com/phpbb/index.php to talk about loss.

 

And, the other news... my comedy world is getting bigger again. I'm starting a comedy school which opens February 12th at Family Music, West Sahara at Cimmaron, open house  5-7 pm. CatheB.com/clinic/about_clinic.html

 

Finally, my favorite project combines my critters, with the work I studied in Calarts- editing. I LOVED editing, and miss it so much, that I thought..hmmmm, got a camera, got critters, got a new computer..let's make this all work. SO I invented, "Rat Room Television". Just check out Youtube.com/ratroomtv to see a glimpse! Hopefully some how this stuff will end up on REAL tv sooner or later!

 

And writing... the next book is called, "I'm Just As Screwed Up As You Are" and my publisher has first dibs. Hopefully they'll like it better than the grief book. It's funny, and really a lot of fun to read. I hope to have that out to them this year.

 

All else... still trying to stay healthy enough to write when I can. Thanks for the support!

The Insanity of the World

You have to wonder how the press puts out stories without typing ROFLMAO at the end of them sometimes. There are two tidbits that recently appeared, and any Atheist with half a wit will think it is from a spoof magazine. In fact, it's not. It's Reuters. It's real. It's pathetic. Ready?

Bill Nye Science Guy BOO

'D Off Stage:

Bill Nye, the harmless children's edu-tainer known as "The Science Guy," managed to offend a select group of adults in Waco, Texas at a presentation, when he suggested that the moon does not emit light, but instead reflects the light of the sun.

As even most elementary-school graduates know, the moon reflects the light of the sun but produces no light of its own. But don't tell that to the good people of Waco, who were "visibly angered by what some perceived as irreverence," according to the Waco Tribune. Nye was in town to participate in McLennan Community College's Distinguished Lecture Series. He gave two lectures on such unfunny and adult topics as global warming, Mars exploration, and energy consumption. But nothing got people as riled as when he brought up Genesis 1:16, which reads: "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." The lesser light, he pointed out, is not a light at all, but only a reflector. At this point, several people in the audience stormed out in fury. One woman yelled "We believe in God!" and left with three children, thus ensuring that people across America would read about the incident and conclude that Waco is as nutty as they'd always suspected.

Yeah, that's the first story. Are you done chortling, and stuffing your tissue into the key board? Okay, here's story two. http://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUSEIC47086020070905

KATHMANDU (Reuters) - Officials at Nepal's state-run airline have sacrificed two goats to appease Akash Bhairab, the Hindu sky god, following technical problems with one of its Boeing 757 aircraft, the carrier said Tuesday.

Nepal Airlines, which has two Boeing aircraft, has had to suspend some services in recent weeks due the problem.

The goats were sacrificed in front of the troublesome aircraft Sunday at Nepal's only international airport in Kathmandu in accordance with Hindu traditions, an official said.

"The snag in the plane has now been fixed and the aircraft has resumed its flights," said Raju K.C., a senior airline official, without explaining what the problem had been.

Local media last week blamed the company's woes on an electrical fault. The carrier runs international flights to five cities in Asia.

It is common in Nepal to sacrifice animals like goats and buffaloes to appease different Hindu deities.

Yes, we are now in a world where sacrificing goats to appease Sky Gods is acceptable flight behavior. A pilot can now use a blessed knife rather than a box cutter, I guess.

Now the link to the Bill Nye story is from 1990. That's the powere of the Internet. It lets you in on stories that are nearly 20 years old, and doesn't tell you so. I got the link today in an email, and it was sent as part of a great "What is this world coming to?" post. BUT the world had arrived there back when I was still in Graduate school, and we were still driving cards made of rocks we had to push with our feet.

Yet it holds up. It holds up because we're willing to believe that these crazy people are still around barking at scientists and telling them how insane they are for telling truths. And the airline story will appear in someones blog in 20 years, because in 20 years no one will remember that it happened this year. And people will think that it's just weird enough to have happened that day. Crazy people are ALWAYS around us, and insanity because of religion ALWAYS exists.

And it's up to us to point at it and laugh.

Godless Grief Has a Publisher

Godless Grief is now officially accepted to a publisher, as of Friday, the 13th.

Prometheus is NOT that publisher, despite their push to have the book finished 8 weeks prior to my actual deadline. I had planned to finish the book by the end of May this year, and Prometheus told my agent they needed it by February. Why? Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins both had top 10 released Atheist manifestos that month, so it was the spicy topic dujour on the talk show circuit, I suppose. I wasn't happy about being told to put years worth of interviews, into a haphazard text, or cram together my thoughts in mere days when I planned to breathe a little more life into chapters. Some chapters were living well on their own for months already, while others sounded rather academic, and dry. The book didn't feel right to me. But I had been told-- give them a full book, and they'll be so happy. In two weeks time they'll give you a contract and by September, you'll have Godless Grief in everyone's hands!

Well, that fantasy didn't pan out. After sending the first three chapters, as normally is done by non-fiction authors to publishers, via the agents, or not, you usually get asked for a proposal. You don't normally get asked for an entire book. So red flags should have waved. Instead, a full manuscript was expected in 11 days. Edited. I hired two editors. One of them was for typos, one of them was for clarity. Fortunately, they both got what I was saying, and are Atheists, so neither fought me on topic, or theme.

Then, after submitting said manuscript. I waited. The agent waited. The world waited. The Godless Grief forum continued to breathe and exist. People were asking about the book, and with chapters now ready for them, I posed snippets there. Why not? No publisher yet. Waiting. Waiting. Weeks go by. Finally the agent has enough and I have enough and we need to submit to other places, so we ask Prometheus what the hell is going on that they demand so much, and I get a curt note stating that the book wasn't Atheist enough, but should have declared that everyone should be putting forth Atheist manifestos. Uhm. It's a grief book. It's not an Atheist manifesto. Prometheus wasn't looking for a grief book. At least not from someone who had gone through chemotherapy or 9-11 or did comedy. they wanted me to be a former Dr. Phil gone Atheist. And they never got that I wasn't that.

So Paul Kurtz, whom I adore, not two weeks later, signed ONTO this very MySpace page..or his assistant did..so someone at Prometheus likes me. And, we moved on to other publishers. Now there is a finished manuscript. I go back and tweak it some more, with a few changes cleaning up some of the rushed words and comments, so it is smoothed out. It's still not exactly the book I wanted, but it's better and less of a "gottagetthisoutnoworprometheuswontpublish" book, and more of a practical guide and realistic approach. I now have endorsements, and people reading it for thoughts and jacket blurbs.

The word is getting out there. So much so that two of the people who worked on it, Keith Cornish and Rhys Watkins, from Australia, who died this past Winter and Spring, are now getting copies read during their memorials. Then, Atheist Alliance International uses Godless Grief as their sole source during the events at Virginia Tech. Then Clark Adams commits suicide and some of us who are friends of his are all meeting each other at the Godless Grief forum.

The forum has been a proverbial lifeline for all those grieving for a variety of reasons. Life, limb, and other losses bring people together to discuss and mourn, and laugh, and re-acquaint themselves with life again. And, even other authors are reaching out.

This press is one of the many approached by my agent Janet Rosen. Janet is friends with so many other Atheists and agnostics, skeptics and others. She knows the people there and what they do for others on the human level. Their purpose has always been to make the heart and mind a better place. I like that purpose. The personalities and my personalities seem well suited. There's something that clicked. They took my manuscript three weeks ago, sat with it a week after that, and then this week made the decision. That is professional, that is the way it was supposed to have been. That is what made me very happy. They don't play games or waste time.

Soon many of you will have Godless Grief on your bookstore shelves. Many of you will meet me in person and chat with me at those bookstores. Some of us will have to chat with those who don't understand that church and grief have nothing to do with each other, but we'll manage. In the meantime, we have this space, and we have the Godless Grief forum.

Thanks to Janet Rosen, and Sheree Bykofsky for the work and support in getting Godless Grief to the right people. And the new publisher will be a great home for the words. I think you'll find they are supportive in many ways for many reasons.

Cathe Jones

I've Been TAGGED!

Looks like I've been tagged by Annalemma. The rules are as follows:

• We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.
• Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
• People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.
• At the end of your blog post, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
• Don't forget to leave them each a comment telling them they're tagged, and to read your blog.

So, heeeeere we blog!

1. I train rats! And if you want to see a sampling you can visit YouTube, and go find CatheJ.
2. My husband is a world famous jazz pianist, who is going to have his Los Angeles premiere on July 13th. (Oh, come on, no one said I couldn't pimp the hubby.)
3. I have a genetic disorder called Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, which puts me on daily morphine dosages that are equal to that of those given to people getting bones reset during surgery, and I've never felt as much as a buzz.
4. I have smoked a cigar.
5. Since March, I've lost 21 pounds, without exercising.
6. Although my current album has a minimum of 7 instruments recorded on ever track of it, I am the only member of the band.
7. I have five blogs, two of which are not available to the public.
8. My favorite food is fudge brownies, but I won't eat more than one at any time because they give me headaches.

Okay .... I'm tagging:

The Neural Gourmet!

Zen Carmudgeon

Bitchasaurus

Expired Convictions

Fish Wars on Cars

Ron's Rants

Uncouth.net

Wanderin' Weeta

Cos I really loved their names and when I read them, I loved them more...
Okay...tagged signed and delivered. Letting the games continue.... in godless we trust. ;)

Something Amazing for Teens

The Colorado Coalition for Reason, CoCore.org, has done something pretty wonderful. They've put together a video program that they're distributing out to social science classes in high schools across the United States. It's 38 minutes long, so even teachers with short attention spans can watch it. The video presents an instructor in a comparative religion class with 35 students, talking rationally, and answering their questions. The idea was to present an Atheist understanding of the world view, with the importance of logic, science and reason emphasized, in a discussion of separation of church and state. This video was distributed to 16,000 schools nationwide in October of 2006, and any educator who would like to have a copy could request one, for free, from the website linked above.

It's been a just over half of a year since this was shown in schools. Some news outlets have picked up the story. Others have disregarded it with as much interested as I have in Paris Hilton. But, the greatest part of the story is that kids are now talking about it. They've begun to understand that they are allowed to have intelligent discussions, and can question ideas that have been forced upon them. The status quo isn't necessarily the truth, and many of them are learning that the foundation of the church isn't always the solid base on which truth exists. In fact, many are discovering that they are able to stand up for truth by denying lies. It's a welcoming sign of changes to come.

To this end, my hope is that more teachers bravely take on the idea that to enrich the minds of their students, they can reach out to the CoCore program. Even if these instructors are "faith" minded, and unsure as to what they might discover, just the idea that social studies include the study of those of us who carry no belief system, is surely a way to open paths of communication.

For this, I applaud this Colorado group! I am eager to see if they are taking a census of the instructors to whom the video was sent. I would like to know what questions the students are asking that had not been addressed, and if this would lead to any additional projects. If so, I hope that some people donate to this group. The project cost $8500 for the production alone, and I can surmise the postal costs were enormous. Should any group be more deserving for a project of this type, at this time, then I'd be willing to support it. But, I believe this project to be very important, and very needed for the youth of America, or anywhere.


CJ

A Piece of A Memorial

Today I gave a presentation on Godless Grief to members of the Las Vegas Freethought Society and the Halvason group who wanted to celebrate a little bit of Clark Adams life today. Today was Father's Day, so I started with a little mention that it was a bit of anger in me that he made this a mother of a day, and and he made some people very angry, too. For some, the day was about being able to share their memories of Clark in an open forum, while others are still very raw over the idea that someone with that much going for him would elect suicide as an option.

It took me several tries, but I finally elected to use a part of the Godless Grief series that was written for the teen group. In this book, Atheist Angst, there is a chapter about puberty and suicide. One of the largest groups in this country who do commit suicide are kids between the ages of 14 and 18. Psychiatric journals believe this has much to do with hormonal changes, and the impact of estrogen and testosterone mired with rapid flux. There are still studies going on, but in the United States these studies are not allowed on people of certain age groups, so we may not learn how the pubescent mind develops suicidal thoughts for many years to come.

One of the young women I interviewed is a twin, whose sister shot herself in front of a classroom at the age of fourteen. Her sister, left bewildered, was convinced that their tie as twins should have been the bond that alerted her to the event to come. Instead, she was off on a day off, with friends, enjoying a field trip with her class. Although the teachers were called, her parents said that they didn't want the living daughter told until they got to the school to pick her up. The entire school was aware of the incident, and nowhere, at no time, did she have any sense that there was any thing wrong for the hours she was away. She wrote to me,

"I expected to have a sisterly sense and feel a hole in me that would let me know when she was dead, but I never got that. I never even know she was feeling depressed. I look back now and think of things she did, and think that if I really paid attention to them, she would never have killed herself at all. She would be here." Her parents disagreed, though.

"We saw her depression at every turn. When her sister would smile, she was always turning inward and never wanted to hear us tell her she was a pretty girl, or let us laugh with her. There was always something just not happy about her." Her mom wrote me a letter, and her father wasn't that gentle about it, when he wrote a few weeks later, "She cried all the time, and when she wasn't crying, she was lying about something. She lied about where she was, or who was with her, or what she wanted. She lied about what she was going to do with her life, she lied about what was in her sandwich. She just couldn't face anything as true. If it was true, it was going to hurt her. And no matter how hard we tried to make her believe she was loved, or safe, or beautiful, or anything, she was always lying about something to make it better than it was."

Pathologic lying is a sign of depression, which often is a sign of deep insecurity. In childhood, it can be turned inwards, to the point where the lies are so great, and so extreme that the liar has no understanding anymore where the lies end and where the truth begins, and somewhere in between they begin to believe they live in this world somewhere in between. For the deeply depressed, it can manifest itself as a self destructive pattern. For the deeply disturbed, this can manifest itself into a more cruel path, and sometimes lead to more criminal behavior at its worst, or malicious bullying at its least. For those who have depression, sometimes lying to oneself is the first sign of a deeper issue, and a greater need for attention. In fact, the attention one should seek at the stage when a lie is more comfortable than the truth is from a competent psychologist or psychiatrist. However, for those in deep depression, or for those who have lived these lies for so long, they are often unaware that they are in these fantasy worlds.

At today's Memorial I talked a bit about this girl's suicide and the events in her life. I think that some times we do get caught up in the "Why?" and I was still getting a lot of emails from three or four people who are still lost in that cycle of thinking. So, I'm sharing this section of the memorial with you, and I'm also including the National Suicide Hotline number, so if you need more help to handle your feelings on this issue, you can talk to someone right now.

Cathe
------------------------
What do you do?

Do you find yourself over analyzing your part in someone’s decision in suicide? Instead of asking yourself “WHY” ask yourself “What can I do now?”

This is an exercise to help you remember that you have no say in someone else’s decisions, just as someone else has no say in yours.

• Take out a piece of paper and a pen or paper. Write out three things you will accomplish before the end of the day. Write out three thing you probably won’t accomplish by the end of the day. Write out three things that someone very close to you should do, by the end of the day. Ask that person to do one of the things on the list, either that you plan to do, or that you hope he or she will do. Wait.

• Tomorrow, write out one thing you accomplished today that was on your list, and write out one thing that you didn’t see done, that you or someone else was supposed to have done. Did you disappoint yourself? Did the other person disappoint you? Was the disappointment intentional? Was it personal? Was it something that was a very big deal?

• Now, let’s assume that the person who killed herself was in that state of mind where her actions, completely her own, were not designed to harm you in any way. She was only deciding based on the state of mind she had at that moment, the best action she had for herself at that time. Did she plan to personally hurt you, or was she only doing what she thought best for herself? Does it matter now?

When we try to ask WHY? we are telling ourselves that we should be better than the person who died, when in fact, we can’t be. We can’t be because we don’t have that person’s perspective on the issues he or she faced. We don’t have his or her life’s experiences. We don’t have his or her understandings. We can’t be better or smarter, or wiser, because we do not know where her head was, and she may have been far wiser with more information than we were party to. She may have protected us, or she may have not thought of consequences beyond. Certainly, as Atheists, we can understand that she didn’t feel her soul was condemned. For every WHY, we end up in a circular loop- WHY leads to “Why aren’t we good enough to save her?”

We can’t put that much hate within. We’re asking ourselves, “Why wasn’t I good enough to be worth staying alive for?” We are not, in fact, the sole purpose for another person’s existence, as much as we’d like to believe that to be true. Romance, or parenthood aside, each of us possesses a drive for purpose, and a drive for acceptance. For some self-acceptance is difficult. For others, material wealth is key to success. In my world, I thrive for music, and to help others, and of course, the love of my husband reminds me daily that I do have love, and kindness around me. But, for one of my best friends, being solitary, and spending time with his computer, and on a plane is very satisfying, and to lose that would destroy him. Each of us needs specific things to feel whole. We are not completed by one other person.

(From the book Atheist Angst- Teenaged Atheists and Stuff)

National Suicide Hotline: 1-800-273-TALK
(1-800-273-8255)