Another December 21 spending in Las Vegas and of course the day is not all that special as I am not even considering telling my friends here that it is my birthday because there is nothing worth celebrating other than getting older by another year. But I never stopped pondering about the universe wherever I travel and on this day I really want to express my thoughts about how science has come such a long way over the last 500 years to explain the current state of spacetime without having to invoke divine intervention.
Scientific facts are beautiful and elegant, but more importantly, they are reliable and always telling the truths. Any beliefs that are not evidence based, or just based upon “faith”, ” emotion”, “feelings” or “prayers” are what we called superstitious and that means they are not reliable at all. Why did the crops fail? Why were there plagues? Why lightning, thunderstorms , hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes happened? Thousand of years ago people believed those were due to some mystical power from gods but now we have established clear and concise scientific facts about all of those natural phenomena. They sure thought they were right back then just like the way the Roman Catholic Church thought that the Earth was the center of the universe and everything revolved around it yet they never bothered to even look at the evidence that scientists like Galileo had to present but put him in inquisition. Today we teach children to make observations, to question when there are doubts , to apply logical rational thinking process and not jump into conclusions so quickly until they examined all the evidence. Human beings are victims and most of us tend to believe based on feelings and emotions because our brains are structured precisely like that and we are probably the most biased living thing on Earth. We enjoy fantasies such as the existence of aliens visiting Earth but we don’t have any solid evidence to support this idea. When I was asked whether or not I believe in aliens, my response was as follows: Within our observable universe, there are about 200 billion galaxies like the Milky Way and each galaxy has about 100 to 200 billion stars like our sun and many of them probably harbor a solar system very much like our own resulting in many exoplanets resembling Earth, so it would be very unlikely that we are the only civilization within the vast expanding universe and life is probably very abundant in the universe, but at the same time, we are so far from each other that it would be so unlikely for any two civilizations ever come across each other due to the fact the spacetime is so infinitely large ( Fermi’s paradox), so to claim that every time we see something flying out there that we can’t identify to be aliens visiting us is absurd. Like most scientists out there, I don’t believe in aliens visiting Earth from some distant galaxies which is going to take them million of years to get here for what? But human minds work precisely like this because aliens would have been more exciting than just some unknown astronomical phenomena which we still have lots to learn to identify. Most of us prefer science fictions over real scientific facts.
As I mentioned before, there are still many people who believe the world is only 6000 years old ( creationists) and real science has informed us that the Earth is about 4.5 billion years old and the universe about 13.7 billion years old. These religion fanatics often believe in anything without evidence and claim they are correct and they seem to have all the answers to everything when in fact they don’t. As an educator, my job is to provide accurate scientific facts based on evidence and tell the truth about the world we live in. In America, more than 60% of the population believe in the existence of fairies when there is absolutely no evidence at all while there is plenty of solid evidence for the theory of evolution but most choose to ignore it. All religions have been misguided but some are much worse than others and I honestly think that the world is better off without it. Christianity is one of the most dangerous where those conservative fanatics often unravel the rule of law with the Bible claiming God will punish people who are engaged with same sex marriage and it is a sin for abortion and that they will all go to hell at the end. The Islam might be even worse claiming that god commanded them to fly airplanes into buildings and killing people because they are sinners. These terrorists while I condemn their actions, are also victims to religion because they really believed that’s what god is telling them the truth to declare wars and to destroy people lives. The upbringing with these twisted religious beliefs led to all sort of chaos in this world and the information they provided are not evidence based. There are more than 18000 different gods among all of the religions in the world and which one should we believe in? The religious groups don’t even agree with each other and often conflict among themselves. Just take a look at the LHC ( The Large Hadron Collider ) where there are more than 3000 scientists of various fields from many countries come together to develop the cutting edge of science and put their petty differences aside but focusing to make the world a better place to live for everyone. Can you imagine what would happen if all the different religious groups get together in a conference? A third world war would have broken out very quickly. If you think religion is bad, now some conservative far right wing Republicans want to make America into a Christianity nationalism blending politics and the twisted religion together and how dangerous can this be. If this ever happen, HIV patients will be denied treatments and the abortion rights will be taken away from every women. As I said before, politics and religion are the two most poisonous ingredients in this world and when they are blended together, all hell break loose.
People who have chosen to be religious because most of them are fearful of the unknown and wanted to have answers to everything but in reality, we don’t have answers to everything. Science has uncovered lots of unknown over the past 500 years, however, the development of scientific findings is incremental in nature and we need to have solid evidence in order to claim as facts. In science, there are no reasons or purposes for everything that happen in the world, yet we need to accept catastrophic events as they are part of living in this natural world and we are all subject to these catastrophic events such as earthquakes, plagues, freak accidents and the lost of loved ones. There is no authority figure in science unlike in religion, science don’t have a Heavenly dictator commanding us what to do and how to live our lives. Realizing life is short and unpredictable, we need to create our own meaning and purposes to make life worth living. We build fond memories for people to remember us when someday we are no longer here. We also need to contribute something good in this world to make it a better place to live and our contributions will remain as permanent memories in history, just take a look at people like Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, Charles Darwin and see how their contributions in science leading to the world we live in today. Music composers like Mozart, Beethoven where their music still flourish today but I don’t find any good memories of religions in this world other than wars and conflicts well documented in history. If you think religions bring in good moral standards, then you are wrong again as there are many non religious people who do have high morality and take a look at many Catholic priests and pastors who committed those unspeakable crimes in molesting young children which is also well documented in the media, so where are their moral standards? The world is definitely better off without religions as they poison the young mind of today feeding them with inaccurate information and all of those rubbish creationism and they should all be abolished. Science is about making Progress while politics is about Congress. Science is Descriptive while religion is Prescriptive. Science focuses on uniting everything while religion focuses on dividing humanity.
As I am closing on this blog, I wanted to mention that I got sick on Thanksgiving day while I was in Oceanside and missed the dinner get together with my friend and now on my birthday in Las Vegas, I am sick again. Is it bad karma from God? Is it a form of punishment from the Heavenly dictator because I am badmouthing religions? While that possibility exists, it is highly unlikely as there are many others who are sick as well due to the flu season and with all sorts of viruses going on, are all the sick people being punished? Rubbish idea and that is simply a form of stupidity to think like that. People get sick all the time and that’s why we have modern medicines so we can take advantage of it and feel better. That’s the benefit from scientific facts while ” faith” alone will not make the virus go away. I am determined to feel better as I still have a long vacation to spend here and I have in my possession all the medications I need to feel better in the days to come. Happy holidays to all from Las Vegas, home of the Raiders but I don’t really care for football ever only to continue pondering about the universe which I find fascinating ever since I was a kid and sometimes I still think I am a kid except I realize I get older every year, this sad ” feeling” of mine will not alter the law of entropy in this universe and therefore I will continue to get older but I do love my life. I enjoy what I do for work and my travels and being debt free and drama free. Hey, maybe the religious fanatics will say God is watching out for me in all these years but why since I badmouth western religions all the time, but that possibility still exists, just very highly unlikely!!