The Six Questions of God

Struggling to survive the Nine Threats (see previous posts), we ponder why we find ourselves delivered to a world not of our own choosing.

As our forebears evolved, they first became aware of Surroundings, then Self, and finally, when the first glimmer of higher intelligence glinted in their eyes, they asked the Significance of it all. They asked if there was a supernatural order beyond what we could see and feel. Religion was born. Thousands of them in fact. While these differ wildly in worldviews, they all seek to explain Surroundings, Self, and Significance. They all ask the Six Questions of God.

But with so many different faiths to choose from, how do we know which one is true? Truth is, we don't choose our religion: it chooses us ... the religion of our parents ... and they simply tell us it is the one true faith. That if we just believe strongly enough, then what we believe must be true. This is the ultimate self-fulfilling prophecy; it is why we fling maidens into volcanoes and fly planes into buildings.

The real truth is that we can only assign a likelihood to our beliefs. My novel, PROPH-ET: Journey from Stardust explores the possibility of a supernatural order to the cosmos.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CICMCTA#_

If you want to take a shortcut, follow the link below to ask yourself the Six Questions of God and calculate your God Number.

http://www.yourgodnumber.com/ 

The Ninth Threat to Sentience: Technocide

While the first six Threats are owing to Mother Nature, the final Three are due to our own nature; our propensity to kill ourselves off. As previously blogged, the Seventh and Eighth Threats of Genocide and Ecocide are well under way. And now, the Ninth Threat of Technocide is looming.

Technology can get us in many ways. We can use it to facilitate Genocide a.k.a. nuclear and chemical/biological weapons of mass destruction.

 

 

Or it can accelerate and abet Ecocide, namely through massive clear cutting, over fishing and farming, and climate change.

 

But, like a drug, it can also make us so dependent that we couldn’t live without it. Not many of us, me included, know how to farm, hunt, or fish. Infrastructure is the first target of war (just look what at we did to Iraq). And Power Grids are wide open to terrorists and hack-attacks. What will we do if food doesn’t show up at our local supermarket and water doesn’t run from our taps? I know many who might not even survive the loss of their air conditioners and cell phones!

Then again, technology might just take over and exterminate us.

 

 

In any event, technology is a double-edged sword; we can’t survive the first six Threats without it, but we may not survive ourselves if we use it.

 
Clearly, only a wise and spiritually strong species will make it. But many of the same people who can't hunt or fish want to leave our fate to Divine Providence. To survive the Nine Threats to Sentience, we must all ask the Six Questions of God. Stay tuned.

8th Threat: Ecocide

There is a limited amount of air, land, and water to sustain us, not to mention a narrow band of environmental factors such as temperature, climate etc. in which we can prosper. There is no doubt that we’re having a greater and greater impact on all of the above … and our numbers are growing.

If you think that we can’t destroy civilization by ruining our ecosystem, just look to our past. Throughout our history we have overhunted, over farmed, and over consumed whatever. The Mayans and Easter Islanders could attest to disastrous result … if they were still around.

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Maya/

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/earth/fate-of-easter-island.html

Now, even though we are playing on a worldwide scale, we have only one planet to work with. We are not only clear cutting nature, we’re putting garbage into the soil, sewage into the water, and since the Industrial Revolution, pumping pollutants into the atmosphere. It’s not just that we are breathing  back in soot and dirt, but that the gases (like CO2) we pump into the air that are harmless at environmental feedback loop levels (plants take in CO2 and exhale Oxygen, animals the reverse), are bad in excess. They change the built-in climate-controls that have evolved over eons. Like the Mayans and Easter Islanders, we are playing with forces beyond our comprehension that will have dire results.

http://climate.nasa.gov/effects/

Next up, the Ninth Threat … one we’re just beginning to understand.

7th Threat: Wars and other Acts of Terrorism.

The last three of the Nine Threats can be called Latent: it is the great burden of sentience to carry within the seeds of its own extinction.

At no time in our history, starting with the apes, have we been free of murderous conflict. Even those who harken back to the blissful days of the Garden of Eden must face the fact that Cain got his wife from a pre-existing pool of blood. I don’t need to beat a dead horse on this, but just in case there are any doubters, look at this: http://conflicthistory.com/#/period/1936-1946

Today is no different, at least from the standpoint of armed conflict and the new face of War; to wit, Terrorism. Of course, now we can not only kill off neighboring tribes, but those on the other side of the world as well. The sticks and stones of yesteryear became arrows and bullets, then atomic bombs.

And for those who think détente can save us from ourselves, ask yourself this: would Bin Laden have used ‘The Bomb’? http://www.kingofbombs.com/terrorism.html

With the proliferation of nuclear weapons (and the club is growing), it is only a matter of time before some single-minded madman becomes the ultimate suicide bomber.

http://ploughshares.org/world-nuclear-stockpile-report
But cheer up. Climate Change may get us first! Next up, the 8^th Threat.

The Sixth Threat

The last of the Three Local Threats we can call Biologic; by predation from microbes to monsters, life is the eater of life. And we’re the monsters. Having hunted and clear cut our way to the top of the food chain, we’re killing off other species at some thousand times the rate of natural selection.

http://wwf.panda.org/about_our_earth/biodiversity/biodiversity/

But when you reach the top of the ladder, the threat doesn’t come from above.  The big can be toppled by the smallest of creatures below. The world around us provides many examples: microorganisms are killing off fauna from Brown Bats to Honey Bees. And we just have to look to our own history to see that we are not immune.

More than five hundred years ago, the Bubonic Plague (caused by bacteria) killed about 1/3 of Europeans  … in crowded cities, up to 2/3 of the population died faster than they could be burned.  http://www.health24.com/Lifestyle/Man/Your-health/Bubonic-Plague-15-facts-20130318

 

In a perverse feedback loop, bacteria are becoming resistant to antibiotics because we've overused them. Now, drug companies aren’t even making many antibiotics these days; there’s not enough money in it! Makes you wonder who they think will buy their products when the next killer bug bites and we have no defense?

Then of course, there's viruses. Just a hundred years ago or so the Spanish flu killed 50-100 million people, nearly  1/3 of those infected died. Believe it or not, the worst hit was the 20-40 age group. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1918_flu_pandemic

Today, pandemics still threaten us.  The kill rate for H7N9 is some 33%. And there's no vaccine. It's just a matter of time before this mutates into an easily spreadable form. http://healthland.time.com/2013/06/24/most-recent-h7n9-flu-deadlier-than-h1n1/

We’re killing the planet and leaving ourselves open to Mother Nature’s revenge all for a few bucks. And do we really think we can prosper as a sole survivor when most of the animals and plants are gone. Biodiversity is a symbiotic feedback loop that sustains itself. Like the climate, it has a tipping point beyond which our house of cards will fall. We know this is true, we just won’t know how much killing is too much until it's too late.

In truth, greed is willfully short-sighted. And Capitalism feeds off greed. The mantra of the blissful blind has become “Market forces will fix everything.” Yet consumerism is driving us like lemmings to the cliff. We better wake up; the Market has no conscience. It makes a better servant than master.

But such predators aren't our worst problem. Next, the ‘Latent Threats’  7-9 where we willfully prey upon ourselves.

5th Threat: Biospheric

This threat to life is the second of three ‘Local’ threats; a good example of the fact that you not only need to live in a safe neighborhood, but a safe home as well. Never mind the more immediate danger from earthquakes, tsunamis, and super volcanoes, we can’t take the air we breathe and the water we drink for granted. The Moon and Mars have lost (or mostly lost) theirs—and Venus is an example of a good thing gone bad.

                 http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr161/lect/venus/atmosphere.html

                With an atmosphere of 96% carbon dioxide, Venus is a greenhouse with little free oxygen.  It’s too hot for surface water, and even if there was any, it would be laced with sulphuric acid. And in case you think the 5^th Threat is esoteric, this, or something similar is where we’re headed.

                First up: atmospheres can change. Earth is on its third. In fact, for much of history, our air wasn’t much better than that of Venus.

http://teachertech.rice.edu/Participants/louviere/history.html

                Second, organisms can change atmospheres. To wit, we wouldn’t have oxygen without bacteria, and humans (simply larger symbiotic bags of bacteria) are now pumping carbon dioxide into the air.

No one denies this, but those that are doing the most damage ignore scientists and pretend it doesn’t make any difference. Availing themselves of science—they gladly crank up the AC in their pickups and SUV’s, pop open a cold one from the fridge, or fire off a couple of rounds from their AK47’s—but tell them something they don’t want to hear and suddenly they’re smarter than Einstein. Saying there are two sides to the ‘Climate Debate’ is like saying there are two sides to the Holocaust.

Anyway, it may already be too late.

http://blog.syracuse.com/opinion/2013/05/climate_change_400_ppm_carbon.html

 

            I hope there is a hell for nay-sayers and do-nothings.  I guess it would look like Venus.

The 4th THREAT of NINE

 

This is what I’ve called Geologic, the first of the Three Local Threats not from the sky above our heads, but the ground below our feet.

First up, Earthquakes. Like the big one in Japan in 2011, or in Sumatra in 2004, of course here, the one San Fran in 1906 … and ‘the beat goes on.’  Arguably, despite better building codes and warning systems, we are more vulnerable because we are so dependent on our infrastructure. It’s the collateral damage to buildings, nuclear power plants, electricity, gas lines, sewage pipes, etc.  We’ll be up to our proverbial in it and aftershocks. Then there always the chance of Tsunamis. Anyway, we know the next big one is coming … we just don’t know when or where.

http://www.australiangeographic.com.au/journal/the-10-biggest-earthquakes-in-recorded-history.htm

Worse are Super Volcanoes, thousands of times larger than ‘normal ones.’  And yes, they do go off on a regular basis.  The largest confirmed such eruption was some 28 million years ago … in Colorado … about 2000 times larger than Mt. St. Helens. And we think there may have been larger still about 130 million years ago when South America and Africa were joined at the hip as part of Gondwana. Talk about a messy divorce!

Anyway, the damage here is not just to nearby flora and fauna from massive lava flows and hot gases, but worldwide from volcanic ash pumped into the atmosphere in huge quantities. Carried by high level winds, this eventually blankets the Earth blocking the sunlight and killing plants that support the food chain. Of course, the temperature drops so we’ll freeze in the dark with nothing to eat.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcanic_Explosivity_Index

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_volcanic_eruptions

And we know a big one is coming soon. Yellowstone has been super-erupting every 600-700 thousand years for the last two million years. The last one was about 620 million years ago!

http://www.cbc.ca/doczone/episode/supervolcano-yellowstones-fury.html

Then there’s always the Magnetic field! We’re living next to an unshielded nuclear power plant (the sun) with only a ‘magnet’ for protection. Eventually this runs out; the Moon and Mars have already (mostly) lost theirs if you get my drift. Of course, this will take a while yet for us, but ours flips periodically between the North and South poles and in the process we lose protection for some period of time. Signs point to the fact that we’re overdue! How do you like your chicken … extra crispy?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetic_reversal

http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/10/03/earths-magnetic-field-overdue-for-a-chaos-causing-possibly-life-altering-flip/

Threat # 3 of 9

 

The last of the three threats from beyond our world I’ve labeled ‘Planetary’ because these involve collisions between planets and planetoids; moons, asteroids, comets etc. These smaller hunks of rock and ice are found in the Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter and in the Oort cloud from the orbit of Neptune to the outer reaches of our solar system. They’re the leftovers of the grand buffet that filled in the planets … but they can still cause a ‘food fight.’

The Earth was formed from the torrid union of a well hung planetoid and a stoned tramp.

 

                                              

 

And early on our world was rocked. Eventually, like marriage, things calmed down. But the cosmos can still get its rocks off … just ask the dinosaurs.

Scientists say it is just a matter of time before we have another extinction event. Lately, both our moon and Jupiter have been struck.

 

 

Closer to home, earlier this year one exploded in our atmosphere. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y66OHiB_p4I

Fortunately it was small. NASA tracks NEOs (Near Earth Objects) … but their budget just got cut! Heads up … we’re due.

Next up, the first of the Three Local Threats.

 

 

The Second of Nine Threats

This threat is all about the life and death of stars, and precisely where you happen to be when it happens.

In five billion years, give or take a billion, in its death throes the sun will bloat like a gassy balloon … maybe as far as Mars. Unfortunately, Earth is in the way. Sayonara sapiens. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9L7SMoT3RM

But we won’t have to wait that long. In about a billion years, give or take a few hundred million, the sun will be unbearably hot. It’s already about 30% hotter than in its youth. Talk about climate change.  http://io9.com/what-the-death-of-the-sun-will-look-like-471796727

But maybe even before that, solar storms will get us. 1859 was the year of the last big one. http://www.space.com/12584-worst-solar-storms-sun-flares-history.html

To the point, we’ll be gone long before the sun dies. But it doesn’t even have to be our star that does the job. Every 225-250 million years we complete an orbit of the galactic center. While there are currently no candidates for supernovae in our neighbourhood, if we wait long enough, like the weather, that’ll change. Do you know where your sun has been? http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2011/12/are-we-entering-the-danger-zone-the-solar-systems-250-million-year-orbit-through-the-milky-way.html

Next blog, Threat #3.

The First Threat

In Proph-et: Journey from Stardust, needing a fresh and unbiased perspective of our journey, I began with the premise that in a vast and ancient cosmos, other beings would certainly arise. That somewhere, somehow, some sufficiently advanced species would find a way to survive—and that ‘godly’ science and spirituality would be required to do so.

The alien worldview I created in my novel centers around the Nine Threats, the Six Questions of God, the Three Awakenings, and the One Path to endure, because it seemed to me that any such species would put structure to their passage. I know it frustrates me to try and make sense of ours. As previously covered, the purpose of this blog is to present each of these in a non-fiction setting … to present the thinking behind them.

So to begin, it struck me that the cosmos is a dangerous place, and since we share it, all would face the same dangers. I structured these into three sets of three each … to wit, the Nine Threats.

I labelled the first set of three Threats ‘External,’ because these originate from beyond any planet that might harbor life. And I called the first of these Threats ‘Galactic’ because even galaxies have “habitable zones” where metal-rich stars orbit a safe distance away from the fiery center. No one wants to live close to Black Holes which inhabit galactic centers. Most are very active, swallowing dust, gas, and even stars, burping out deadly radiation. Only sufficient science could save a species so placed; likely only a space-faring one would survive.

Bear with me on this train of thought. The next blog is about the Second Threat. But if you can’t wait or want more info, check out my website at www.proph-et.com and navigate to ‘about Propheture’ and on to the Nine Threats page. Cheers.

The first step on the Journey from Stardust is to plan the trip. At least to put some structure to what lies behind so that we can more clearly see the road ahead.

Ever notice how complicated things become when we keep adding new insights to what we think we already know. We end up with a wall full of sticky ‘post-it’ reminder notes … eventually you just need to step back and re-organize it. As per my previous blog, after copious research, this is what I did for the human journey.

I concluded that as a species, we struggle to survive Nine Threats, ask Six Questions of God, and pass through Three Awakenings in search of the Path to endure. Such structure helps sharpen our focus on what’s truly important; to wit, the Meaning of Life. Along the way, I discovered that our personal passage has many parallels.

Anyway, having put our collective search for meaning in fresh perspective, I will lay it out piece by piece beginning with the Nine Threats. Understanding the perils we face, natural or otherwise, not only sharpens our resolve to overcome them, but gets us to looking ahead. My next Blog will be about the first of Nine.

Meaning of Life

This blog will be about the conclusions reached in Proph-et: Journey from Stardust. Because, thinking for myself about life’s big questions, I’ve studied religions other than my own to see what they said of Significance, read philosophers that had pondered questions of Self, and looked to science for a better understanding of Surroundings. It just seemed wiser to put the horse before the cart—and seek out some expert “second opinions” in the process. Having reached an informed opinion, I wanted to share. Many readers noted my novel is as much about fact as fiction and suggested I also write a ‘text book’ to detail and expand the message. This blog is a compromise. Every week I’ll take a step on the journey we all share, peel back a layer of our defining moments, and share the meaning I found. But let me begin with the reasons I chose to write a novel.

First, I opted for fiction because thinking has become a spectrum disorder. At one end are the Contented: those who unquestioningly believe authority—spoon-fed by their parents, the first thing they swallow is the only religion they’ve ever been taught. At the other end are Conspiracists who don’t believe anyone in a position of power—these are the ones that make up their own myths. In between are the Critical Thinkers: those who are willing to deal with facts and who thoughtfully come to their own conclusions. But after decades of being spun dizzy by pastors and pundits, this is becoming a lost art. And the “dumbing down of America” is accelerating with the mindless entertainment now being served up in the media. In this era, people want the meaning of life in three seconds. A novel that was as much enlightenment as entertainment seemed to be the best vehicle for the times. And while I can’t promise instant gratification, I have greatly shortened the journey for those who will put in the time.

Second, I wanted to have a distinct voice with a fresh perspective on our passage; to be a knowledgeable but dispassionate ‘Tour Guide.’ Recalling the advice that if you can’t solve a small problem make it bigger, I expanded my scope beyond humanity to the Cosmic passage and purpose of Being. This allowed me to use an alien viewpoint; to wit, a spiritual species who, having solved their problems, judged our passage without “our baggage.” After all, from what I’d gleaned from science, other life is not only possible in a vast and ancient cosmos where planets and the chemicals of life abound—but inevitable. I even joined the Mutual U F O Network as a Field Investigator to see if the “truth was actually out there.” While I took some inspiration from these X-files, in the end I don’t ask you to suspend belief but only to expand your imagination. To my point, this too had to be fiction.

So, brain brimming with science, philosophy, and religion, I synthesized what I’d found and put it in a novel. Of course, not everyone will want to read it. In particular, those who are sure they have all the answers, those that are afraid of the answers, and those who are not even willing to ask the questions (and I guess that some don’t even care about the meaning of life). Clearly I wrote Journey from Stardust for Critical Thinkers who are willing to make their own informed choices. But I confess I also hoped to pull some of the Contented out of their comfort zone. Of course, Conspiracy Theorists already believe that aliens are among us!

If you are curious and intrepid, follow the “posts” on Journey from Stardust. I’ve done the leg work so you can walk in my footsteps. “Seek and ye shall find.” In my next Blog, the journey begins.