Subscription: $15 / year Membership: $15/year All correspondence to: Editor: Duane Bates All correspondence to: P. O. Box 1744 Greenville, SC 29602 September, 2010

The Voice of Sanity THE NEWSLETTER OF THE UPSTATE S.C. SECULAR HUMANISTS Visit our web-site for current and back-issues at: www.uscsh.org e-mail: uscshgvl@yahoo.com

CALENDAR 

The September brunch will be Saturday, September 11th, 10:30 a.m. at Denny's restaurant, 2521 Wade Hampton Blvd, Greenville.  

Our forth Sunday dinner will be on September 26th at the home of Lee Deitz, 21 Walnut Street, Greenville. The time is 1:30 p.m. Call Lee at 864-233-0905 for a suggestion what your contribution to the meal should be. You may email Lee at leeingvl@aol.com for meal suggestions or directions. 

What: Monthly dinner meeting

Date: Sunday September 26th.

Time: 1:30 p.m.

Meal: call for what your contribution to the meal should be.

RANDOMNESS AND FREE WILL

The subject of randomness as opposed to free will has come up more than once in our group. The pros and cons very controversial and at least create doubt about the predictability of our actions. Our lives are filled with occurrences contrary to our best-laid plans, whether we are buying an insurance policy, spending time in Las Vegas, or applying for a job. It influences our social attitudes, as well. We tend to think all successful people exclusively have extraordinary rare abilities. When people fail, we think only of their mistakes, or, in the case of failure in social systems, we seek those to blame.

Although successful people are successful because they are talented and skilled, it does not follow that if a person possesses talent and skill he will be a success.

Persistence and blind luck play an important role. Take the example of John Grisham. He was rejected over twenty times and it was only when he sold the film rights to one of his books to a movie producer that he was noticed and published on a large scale. After Stephen King was established as a major writer, he decided to publish additional work under the pseudonym Richard Bachman. To his surprise these manuscripts though published after many rejections did not achieve public appeal until his true identity was revealed. Bruce Willis bartended for years in New York while achieving only minor parts in Broadway plays. But when he decided to visit a girl and attend a sports event in Los Angeles his life changed. Someone suggested he audition for a TV series and he ended with the lead in “Moonlighting” because a major actor had refused the part.

Another example of our lack of control over events comes up in teaching. Leonard Mlowdinow, a noted psychologist, remembers a time in his early career when he was hired to teach flying instructors better teaching techniques. In one class he emphasized concentrating on compliments for good performance rather than chewing out for poor performance. After the class, one of the instructors came up to him and said: “I always get better results from students after I’ve chewed them out”. Mlowdinow got to thinking about this and did a little research in statistics. What he found was that compliments and insults don’t make much difference when a student is mastering a new skill. What really happens is that the learning process consists of a long line of random failures and successes where successes eventually prevail. The long and short of it is that the budding pilot would have improved without the chewing out.

Gambling casinos and insurance companies are very cognizant of ways in which randomness works. Otherwise, there would be no actuary tables and no profit from owning a casino. Nevertheless, people have some odd ways of explaining and/or enhancing their luck. A few years a ago a big winner of the Spanish lottery was asked how he came to have the right number, which by the way ended with the digits 4 and 8. He said “I knew I would win because for seven nights in a row I dreamt of the number seven, and everyone knows the 7 times 7 is 48.” And- with the ungrounded reassurance that a win is more likely to happen because it hasn’t happened in a long time, a gambler keeps gambling.

Another interesting aspect of randomness is the “butterfly effect”. The idea originated in the early 1960s. Mathematician and meteorologist, Edward Lorenz was using a numerical

computer model to rerun work he had done in weather forecasting with the idea of starting at the end point of previous work and continuing of with additional data. To his surprise the rerun resulted in a completely different weather forecast. Lorenz realized that in his haste to get on with work he had taken one of the starting numbers to only three decimal places instead of six. Another meteorologist remarked that if that were the case, it would only take the flap of a seagull’s wing to change a forecast. This was later changed to butterfly.

If one tiny random factor can have consequence in determining future events, how can one consider all the tiny random factors when put together will influence an outcome such as a hurricane or earthquake, or simply whether it will rain tomorrow or not? If neither compliments nor harangues make a difference in a person’s learning, should we discontinue praise and disapproval? Should we expect notice or at least good remuneration for our talents? We know gambling is a waste of money, why not stop? The idea of randomness strains the notion of our control over events. Some say that what happens to us is “God’s will”. But, like butterflies, we can and do sweeten the odds. J. Bates

WHY JESUS HAS NOT RETURNED IN THE RAPTURE

 John 14:3, Jesus said, “And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.” 

Matthew 16:28, Jesus said,  “Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.” 

Time and again, Jesus (allegedly) taught his disciples that he would return to “rapture” the “saved” from a wicked world. 2010 years have passed. 

Jesus was supposed to come back the generation after the return of the Jews to Israel. (A generation = 40 years). Certain sects have sold all of their possessions and gone to mountain tops and awaited Christ’s return. Ministers have preached the “soon return” of Christ. Many have preached on the “signs” of his coming for generations. All appointed times have come and gone. Billy Graham and the Pope are still here, so I assume that the “rapture” has not taken place. 

I suppose the reason that Jesus has not returned is because of the pitiful condition of his Church. There are thousands of sects and then divisions in the sects and all say they have the “truth.” Maybe Jesus is working on trying to figure out who exactly has the truth! Now, would Jesus judge them by the Koran or the Septuagint or maybe the King James Version? There are hundreds of other translations, versions, paraphrases, simplified texts, Thomas Jefferson’s Bible, the Catholic Bible, etc. “Christians” are desecrating His Sabbath, telling little white lies and some black lies. Politicians are using God for political gain and quoting from various translations to make their point to other “Christians” who do not know what any of the versions teach. Things are really screwed up! I think Jesus has looked down and said, “Damn, if I go to rapture my Christians, no one really fits the Biblical definition of a Christian and no one will be ruptured. Wow, that will be embarrassing.” 

Another reason why Jesus has not come back in his “second coming,” is because he never went anywhere. There is no historical record that the Jesus of the New Testament ever existed! So, if he never existed, he could not have gone anywhere, therefore, he is not coming back. Let just be honest. Anything as miraculous as a virgin birth, the ability to raise the dead, an alleged ascension into heaven, and the simultaneous resurrection hundreds of Old Testament “Saints” who got up out of their graves and walked around Jerusalem (Matthew 27:2) would have been recorded by a competent historian of the day. But the historian Josephus …Josephus was not born until three years AFTER the alleged death of Christ. What he wrote was hearsay and not admissible in a court of law. 

What we have in Jesus Christ is a rewinding of earlier tales of possibly a good man who went about amusing people with ancient stories that had been spun around campfires for eons.  Unfortunately, religions have capitalized on the fears of the masses and perpetuated the ignorance. The old adage, “tell a lie long enough and it will become the truth” is alive and doing well. 

If I can persuade a group of people to give me all their possessions and sign over their Social Security checks to me and put all that they have in my name, I’ll lead them to a mountain top and wait (for a while). Any takers?

Lee Deitz

Flow chart posted by Hemant Mehta on friendlyatheist.com.