As we struggle to "get to the next level" we need to go beyond a fact-based view of the world to a reality-based view of the world.

Most people assume that facts are the same as reality and that if they know a fact this means that they understand it. Every formally educated person knows that each of us is a member of the species which we call homo sapiens and could correctly provide thet correct answer if asked, but I am beginning to doubt if there is anyone who really understands what that means.

We lack a view of humanity that encompasses all of humanity. I don't even think we have a term that encompasses what that implies.

Let us be honest. The only things that made Nelson Mandela great were 1) the cause for which he was imprisoned for 27 years and 2) his ability to forgive and reconcile with his sworn enemies. Truly, he was larger than life but we all have the opportunity to be as great as Nelson Mandela. Find a cause worthy of your life and effort and be willing to forgive and reconcile with your enemies.

Here is what I have concluded. Christians (and everyone else) are living just the way they should be living. The only problem is that how they are living it is not the way they should be living it. As soon as we figure that out life will be less costly. It will never be easier.

It seems to me that humans are the only species that does not perceive other members of its species in the same way that other species views other members of their species. When a dog confronts another dog it sees a dog. When a bee views another bee it sees a bee. But when a human being views another human being it does not see a human being. Instead it views an individual. This difference lies at the heart of all our social ills.

Scientists have known for decades that humans, known scientifically as homo sapiens, are primates. Because our educational curricula are a reflection of our scientific discoveries this information has been part of the curricula taught in our schools for quite a long time. But when one looks at how science approaches the study of humans in comparison to the study of other primates and other species it appears that humans are treated as if they are neither primates nor a species. At this point humans remain the only species that is studied from the perspective of the individual organism rather than from the perspective of the species. This is a serious gap in our practice of science and by extension in our educational curriculum. More importantly it explains why humans are dissatisfied with the current human condition. This condition will not be corrected until the gap in our science and in our education is closed.

While you are complaining about the condition of the world in which we live you need to ask if you would like to live in the world that you want to exist. How would you like to live in a world without mercy, empathy, sympathy, forgiveness, grace, or encouragement?

Maybe you would understand it better if I rephrased that question. What kind of a world do you think would exist if God got rid of sin? If there is no sin what use would we have for forgiveness? Who needs mercy if no one does wrong? Who needs encouragement if none is discouraged? Who needs grace if none is unable? Who need sympathy or empathy is none has been hurt?

There are three facets to what we call science. The most obvious is the Practice of science which involves how we do science. Next is the Philosophy of science which addresses why we do science. Finally, there is the Principle of Science which addresses why we are able to do what we do in science. The literature addresses the first two but is silent on the third. However, the answers to the problems that vex us the most can only be found in a review of the third facet of science. The first two facets focus on data that we positively gather from the world around us. The third focuses on the same data but from a different perspective that does not depend on human intellect.

A wedding does not begin a marriage. A wedding is a marriage. The only thing a wedding begins is a family. If you believe that God gave you a gift when you were wed or married that gift was not your spouse, no matter how beautiful or handsome that spouse may be. The only gift the God has given to you is the gift of a brand new family. It is to your family that your are to be committed, not to your spouse. When our devotions to our spouses (shouldn't that be spice?) over-ride our devotions to our families ruin is at the door.

A bucket was not designed to hold water; it was designed to be filled with water. You need to empty the bucket periodically for it to meet its full potential.

You can find funding agencies that will give you a grant to study the behavior of a non-human species or the health of a non-human species but there is no agency that will give you a grant to study the health of the human species. They will only provide grants to study the behavior of humans or the health of individual humans. This comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of what constitutes scientific inquiry.

We all know that the mind is a terrible thing to waste, but we would do well to realize that the waste is a terrible thing to mind.

Why is it that in 2013 educated are still holding on to a definition of faith that feeds a debate as to whether science is compatible with faith? Science is impossble without faith. The scientist must have faith in her abilities, faith in her methods, faith in her theories, and faith in the objects of her study. By the same token, faith is always based on the knowledge we have gained through science. What is the use of education if we are not going to use it?

If the educated did not think that menial tasks are beneath them we would have closed the education gap a long time ago.

It is not that the educated do not perform menial tasks. They certainly do - on occasion. But, they would not do them on a regular basis. That underlying belief convinces them that a world of educated people would mean a world in which the menial tasks are not done, and we cannot have that.

The evolution/creation debate is the most ridiculous war humans have ever fought. It is no wonder it seems to have no resolution.

The problem with evolution is that it has no grand plan but its proponents seem to think that it should, which is why they insist that creationists should never have appeared in the "fossilizing" record. A true evolutionist should never complain about anything.

The problem with creation is that the Creator has a grand design but he keeps strangely silent and allows people who seem to know nothing about creation or design to speak on his behalf.

We are in serious trouble.

Do you realize that you woke up this morning? Seriously. Do you realize that you woke up this morning? Let's put the question another way so you get the point. Do you realize that you did not wake yourself up this morning? Think of what that means as you go through your day and interact with others.

At one time or another you must have thought that something is wrong with the world; it is a rare human being who has not. That thought is not triggered by a terrible accident or a horrible natural disaster. The sight of bodies strewn about at the scene of a highway accident or of large swaths of land under flood=waters or of entire cities flattened by tornadoes or a hurricane, does not cause us to think that something is wrong with the world. We understand that accidents happen and that sometimes they can be avoided by being more careful in behavior and practice. We understand the power of nature and that we can avoid being affected by its devastating power by building more prudently. But even when human action contributes to such devastation we don’t blame it on some inherent human failing. We reserve these moments for the sight of a single child who was brutally assaulted by an uncaring adult, of hundreds or thousands of humans who were cut down in the prime of life by weapons of mass destruction. These are the kinds of stories that cause us to say that something must be wrong with the world. And in times like these we wish we had the answer - any answer - that would bring an end to such pain and hurt.

The underlying philosophy that would have us blaming the black community for the problems in the black community is flawed. The rest of nature does not operate according to this philosophy and they certainly have a much better track record than we do. Not even our bodies follow this philosophy. The spleen does not blame the heart for having a heart attack. The very idea is absurd. Sometimes it seems that we all were on recess when school was in.

It is never the prerogative of one member of an organism to destroy another member of the organism. That prerogative belongs to the organism. You are neither your brother's keeper nor his executioner.

We need to start behaving as if the human race does exist and that it is a living organism. An essential quality of every living organism is that it heals itself in an attempt to maintain its homeostasis and existence. We are not outsiders on a mission to save the human race. We are part of the human race being used by the human race to maintain its existence.

Nothing upsets us more than when we think that other people are ignoring the facts. We see this as a roadblock on the road to progress. But we don't realize that we are all guilty of the very thing we all despise. The reason we don't realize this is because we have imposed a narrow interpretation on what it means to ignore the facts. In fact, in conversation to ignore the facts does not really mean to ignore the facts. It really means to act or to take a position contrary to the facts. Consider this example.

It is axiomatic that science is something that humans do, in the sense that we do science. We have known this from the beginning of the scientific age. We all accept this fact but it is so obviously true that we ignore it, meaning that we do not pay any scientific attention to it. We don't ask any questions about it because there is no chance that it can be proven to be false. But it is a Trojan Horse.

While we have not been looking this axiom has transmogrified into a belief that only things that humans do should be considered to be science. Because we ignored the original fact we have tacitly accepted this modification as fact without testing it. It is obviously false to claim that science is NOT something that humans do. That is seen as the opposite of the original axiom. But no one seems to think that the modification is also the opposite of the original axiom. The result of ignoring the original fact is that we have also ignored this new fact and any possible effect it could have on how we develop as humans. So, we accept it as true without even knowing what it really means to say that science is only things that humans do can be science.

We feel an obligation to review things that we consider to be science because we understand that human error can affect our conclusions. That works well and we often discover errors others have made. But what about things humans have not done, but things humans have thought or accepted; like the belief that science is only things humans have done?

Science is both a tool and a process. We are very familiar with its function as a tool but its function as a process has not seeped into our consciousness. As a tool it is something that we use to create models of the world around us. As a process it works on us to fit us for our place in the world. Consequently, we serve two distinct roles in this reality.

It is important that we understand and appreciate the difference between those two roles and how each impacts the other.

If you want to know what Christians think about marriage and family don't pay attention to their marriages or their families. Listen to what they have to say about Adam and Eve's proto-marriage and their family.

Many have expressed the view that Adam was a wuss because he did not abandon his family after his "wife" ate the fruit of the tree. .

There is built into the fundamentals of Christian practical theology a mindset that the family is not important to fight for -- that it should be abandoned on the first provocation. .

If we really want to heal our families we need to get our story on Adam and Eve right.

Why is marriage so important to humans when we are the only species that practices it, it provides nothing that cannot be obtained without it, and we have not found a way to make a success of it?

Clearly, the decision to stick with marriage is not one that we have made but one that has been imposed on us. Wisdom dictates tht we should try to understand this phenomenon for it is part of our cultural DNA.

Are you one of those people who are concerned about the purpose of life? If you want the answer you probably know to ignore the hundreds of books that have been written on the subject, and it doesn't help to analyze your own life. You have not lived long enough.

Here is an idea. Pick anyone you have been close to. The only requirement is that this person must be dead. Here you have all the data you need to figure out the purpose of life. Here is someone who actually completed the cycle of life. The purpose of life is bound in that person's life. What have you learned about life from that life? That is the purpose of life.

It is amusing how committed humans are to the idea that they are radically different from other humans. Have they forgotten what it means to be human?

You could make the argument that you are radically different from other species but how can you think you are radically different from other humans?

That is the height of self-deception.

For the church to continue teaching its current understanding of human salvation and redemption it must abandon its teaching of divine omnipresent. Only a God who is "on his way" can be excused for not yet putting an end to human suffering.

By the same token, scientists have to also admit that nothing they are currently doing is going to change humanity. It is time to get together to find the better way forward.

It is utter madness to continue on the path we are currently.

Humans spend all their lives trying to learn lessons from the world around (and it appears that this is as it should be), blissfully unaware that this is the reason they have not learned anything as a species.

We have thought it unnecessary to learn from themselves. Our natural science is focused on our environment and our behavioral science is focused on the behaviors of individuals and groups of individuals. But we think that no attention needs to be paid to our behavior as a species. The result is that we remain uneducated, short of our highest potential.

We are so enthralled by the wonderful claims made by scientists that we seem not to notice that scientists have NEVER studied the things they make their claims about. How do I know that to be true? Because I am a statistician and statistical analysis is the foundation of all scientific research.

Your first intellectual reaction was to think that I must be off my rocker because when scientists make claims about stars they actually study stars, but that is not where my mind is today

Statistics, like evolution, is based on populations. If a scientist studies one object he knows that he does not have sufficient information to make a reasoned conclusion. That is why they study groups of sunjects. But they never really study the group. They take measurments on the individuals that make up the group and then they aggregate that information in some way. But the information they provide to the publc is about the group even if there is no way they could ever obtain that information from the group. The average height of a group of children is not an actual value; it is a calculated value. There is no way to observe the height of a group.

So, it is obvious that scientists do not describe what they actually study, which leads us to ask, "What are the implications of making claims about something you cannot and did not observe?"

What is the use of having information and then acting as if the information is not known?

We have heard so much about creation and evolution that we believe that we cannot agree on how it is that we, i.e. human beings, appeared on this planet.

The question that should concern us is not whether we were created as humans or evolved into humans from creatures lower down on some evolutionary tree, but whether we came to this earth as explorers from an alien world or emerged as products of the land on which we live.

That is the question that holds the answer to our future. The creation vs. evolution debate is a distraction.

All marriages are perfect; this we must believe. The moment you convince yourself that some marriages are not is the moment you begin to look for imperfections in yours. Opportunities to grow and develop are not imperfections.

The Pacers v. Knicks game is on and George of the Pacers comes away with the ball with 8 seconds remaining. The announcer says "The Pacers will control the ball for the last shot of the period." We have no problem recognizing that he was correct even though it was only George who had the ball in his hands. Why do we find it difficult to understand that every action that every individual human being engages in is done on behalf of the entire human race, including those who disagree with him/her?

If you are convinced (I chose not to say 'believe') that God created the heavens and the earth why do you hold on to theories that could only be true if they were made by trial and error (another term for evolution)?

If you think that evolution has no purpose how do you explain DNA? Nothing shouts purpose like this little, powerful molecule.

There may be a more scholarly way to say this but it is true that when things are working practically problem-free we tend to be less vigilant. We are so enthralled by the positive results that we think any errors or omissions that exist are immaterial.

No where is this more true than in the fields of scientific enquiry. We are so busy using our experimental research trying to figure what what we can get nature to say that we have overlooked the need to listen for what nature is saying to us.

We all know the limits of the human mind. So, what would happen if much of what is now part of the human catalog of knowledge suddenly disappeared and we no longer knew much of what we now know? How would that affect the 7 billion of us who occupy this planet? Transversely, what if the human population was suddenly and precipitously reduced from 7 billion to 100 or down to 2? Would a large portion of human knowledge and ideas suddenly disappear?

How would these scenarios play out? This is more than just a thought experiment. It goes to the heart of answering the most pressing question we have face: Who are we?

"How do we fix this?" is not the question we should be asking today but we have convinced ourselves that this is the only question that can direct us to a solution of what we think is wrong with our world.

This question arises naturally from our scientific activity. We do science by conducting experiments that indicate which action produced better results than other actions. But the success of our scientific activity has blinded us to the fact that we are a part of the same reality that we are attempting to understand through our use of science. Being a self-taught species has tremendous challenges.

Why would you of your own volition, or under the influence of others, believe that to say that the story of Adam and Eve in Genesis is a parable is the same as saying that Adam and Eve did not exist?

When did you start believing that what is told about somebody must always be true or the person does not exist? Should I believe everything I am told about you for you to exist?

I am now convinced that marriage equality will prove to be the most significant human movement of the twenty-first century. It needs to be stated that marriage equality is not about the validation of homosexuality. Thinking that it is misses the point of the exercise.

If God made the world it must also follow that everything that happens in the world is part of God's "plan." This does not mean that He intended for all the pain and torment we suffer anymore than I intend for the first piston in my car engine to go down at precisely the moment that it does. But the moment I decide to turn the key in the ignition that piston is going to go down. If I don't want it to go down all I do is refuse to turn the key. Consequently. the piston going down at that precise time is part of my "plan."

In the wake of the Boston marathon bombings many people are wondering how two seemingly ordinary young men could so easily and so quickly embrace such violence.

This question addresses both the motivation and the process of their conversion. The irony of our concern is how willing we would be to convert people who were in the state these young men were when they planted those bombs into the kind of people we think they should be. Whether one goes from acceptable to unacceptable or from unacceptable to acceptable the process is still conversion.

We do not pay much attention to the motivation behind what we consider to be "good" conversion. But our willingness to classify conversion as good and bad may lie at the heart of the problem we are attempting to solve. The fact is that no one goes from bad to good; that is a judgment made by those who disagree with their ideology.

It appears that the message of Genesis is eternal: in the day that you claim to know the difference between good and evil, violent death will result; you will surely die.

This is really funny. Humans know they need to work together but no one wants to stick their neck out and work together with the others until everybody else is working together.

The first step to overcoming your problems is to understand that your problems are not yours. If you think they are your problems you may be able to solve them but you will never overcome them.

Think about this. God does not judge because He can but because He knows. If you have to be told, you don't know. If you have to discover, you don't know.

And because God knows He does not have to judge.

If you, as a human being, are unsatisfied with what humanity has become you cannot solve that problem by getting rid of the "bad" parts. You have no example of that approach in nature and nature is your only teacher.

The worst part of my wife's funeral service was the funeral service, and I feel the same way about all funeral services. We advertise them as celebrations of the decedent's life but the primary focus of these services is on what the individual has done during their lifetime. There is very little focus on what that person was -- his/her sense of identity. Even at those rare moments when the person's essence is mentioned it is in the context of what that person did. We are obsessed with activity and that is not entirely a bad thing. But what each of us does is just a role each has been given to play, and each does what anyone in similar circumstances would do. But what each of us is; that is where the rubber meets the road.

A good way to demonstrate what I am driving at is to restate the last two sentences to read: But what we do is just a role we have been given to play, and we do what anyone in similar circumstances would do. But what we are; that is where the rubber meets the road.

What meaning we derive depends on how we are thinking.

Summer time?

Aristotle was correct when he said that "One swallow does not a summer make, nor one fine day; similarly one day or brief time of happiness does not make a person entirely happy." But we must be careful not to conclude that the swallow is just an illusion if it is not yet summer. One event does not indicate a trend only if you are anticipating a trend. Summer or not the swallow has appeared and, in the context of life, its arrival has meaning. After all, one has no meaning unless you have two.
Or, does it?

I don't understand why theists find atheists or agnostics to be objectionable. One must first define something before one can disbelieve it. Saying "I don't believe in any gods" is not a reasonable answer to "What god don't you believe in?" Since anything can be a god that would mean that the valiant atheist does not believe in anything. The person who does not know whether there is a god is as threatening as the person who does not believe there is a Santa Clause. Theists should be more concern about theists who do not believe in the full power of their god.

Think about the choices you made today. Do you think they were your choices? They were not. You do not choose to do the things you do any more than a pitcher chooses to pitch a baseball game or a basketball player chooses to shoot a three point shot. Each does what he does because of the team to which he belongs. The choice to make choices is determined by the groups to which we belong. So, don't get angry at the people who do things you do not like. Their responsibility is limited by the type of world you have helped to create. Each of us is because we are.

You really didn't build that. By that I mean that it was not your idea to build it, even though you think you came up with the idea. Think about it. Would you have built it if the circumstances under which you built it did not exist? The answer is "No." So, you have to agree that it was not your idea to build that.

"The love of money is the root of all evil," said the ancient writer. Whose love of money? Why do we assume this principle applies to us as individuals? I don't think it does. The love of money permeates our societies. What puts the most fear in our hearts is the state of our money-based economies. Everything must be monetized. We are ill-at-ease if the money supply is threatened.

Here is a theoretical constitutional law question. The US Constitution allows for write-in candidates and restricts the President to two consecutive terms. What would happen if, in 2016 enough people wrote in the name of Barack Obama for the Presidency for him to win both the Electoral College and the popular vote?

Every promise evokes strong emotions and expectations, but the nature of those emotions and expectations depend on the knowledge and perspective of the one receiving the promises.

The Game is Rigged

The history we are creating is a product of the choices we have made along our journey, but humans have a tendency to overestimate the influence that the choices that they make have on their history. This is driven by a desire to separate themselves from the non-human species, whose behavior we claim is hardwired in their DNA. But how valid is that perspective? The truth is that we do not have sole control over our choices, either as individuals or as groups. Freedom of choice is only an illusion. We all do what we are driven to do by forces over which we have no control.

We seem unwilling to learn the only lesson that decades of science has taught us -- that nature always does what it wants to do and cannot be made to do what it does not want to do.