Dear President Obama, please recognize Darwin Day

     On and around February 12th people all around the globe gather in conferences, meetings, at zoos, museums, homes, schools, parks, etc., to celebrate the life and work of Charles Darwin, born on the 12th of February in 1809.

     Over a century ago while aboard the Beagle, Darwin began to ponder the inhabitants of Earth. The plants and animals he witnessed could not possibly have been placed here by a supernatural deity, for how would there be more after the initial six days? Why would God place different tortoises or finches on different islands of the same climate, within a close proximity? These are just two of the thoughts that led Darwin to one of science's greatest discoveries.

     On the 24th of November in 1859, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection was bravely published. Outside of a few copies given away for promotion, every last one of the 1,250 copies published sold at wholesale the very same day.

     Although The Origin of Species has been worked and reworked, edited and reedited into near oblivion, straying far from Darwin's original points, there is no denying that his theories have changed the way we look at science forever. Darwin realized that all living things on our world came about by evolution from a sole ancestor, branching off in a nearly unfathomable amount of branches. And then, we held the concept natural selection.

     To this day, people still deny the theory of evolution. We can only imagine all the horrors Darwin boldly faced after so many years of fearing the turn out his concept would have. His intentions were not to declaim the idea of God, but to persuade the idea of evolution. Without his realizations, studies, clarity, and strength, I'm not sure science would be in the same place it is now, with the same power it rightfully carries. Perhaps it would be different, very different. But maybe it wouldn't be different at all, so why not honor all evolutionary biologists on Darwin Day? Personally, Darwin Day is about unity of all species, especially the one that seems to need it most - Homo sapiens.

     So please, help those already aware and sign this petition urging the United States' wonderful President Barack Obama to publicly recognize Darwin Day. It is so important that the leaders of all nations recognize the importance of science and make our intolerance of religion in science classrooms known. It is highly improbable there is room for God in the universe, but there has been room for science.

     If you are interested in seeking events around your area, you can check out lists here at the International Darwin Day Foundation  and here at RichardDawkins.net.

     (If you sign the petition you may comment this blog or email me letting me know and I will update this post with a link to your blog or personal website of choice. Thank you.)

"Thoughts on.." Part Two- Religion

 Thoughts on..

Abortion 11/05/09 | Death Penalty | Prostitution | Alcohol

Gay Marriages | Illegal Immigrants | Downloading Music

Smoking | Drunk Driving | Cloning | Racism

Religion 11/13/09 | Premarital Sex | Porn

Religion?

29 April 2008- Have faith in whatever you want, but regardless, its not going to send you anywhere, its not going to make you a better person, its not going to help you. IT MAKES YOU A FUCKING ASSHOLE if you try to push it onto other people. If you're that fucking helpless that you need to shove it down someone else's throat, please jump in front of a car for me.

13 November 2009- For a considerable amount of time I evaluated the differences between Atheism and Agnosticism, and for a time I couldn't even comprehend the now-obvious distinguishing characteristics. I never leaned towards one or the other besides reason of "cool factor", meaning whatever influential person I looked up to at the time advised I should deem truth, I deemed truth. I can finally say in an irony-rich statement that I have comfortably attained security within a religion—or lack of—that I believe in. I never considered that I might as well have been condemned to cross irony in believing in disbelief. I should have foreseen such a result, considering I was the subject. I always knew subconsciously, regardless of my hopeless denial, that it'd never be as easy as deciding which God to believe in when the inevitable reality was that I believed in none.

     I hate to compare this to an irrelevant topic, especially since it withholds the possibility of pissing said group off, but it makes a lot of sense to me and I find comparisons that in my case of religious self-discovery it's similar to being gay. I unconditionally believe that gay people are born gay because they can recognize they're gay—whether they know what gay means yet or not—at a prepubescent age because it's genetic and not a conscious choice. From every recollected childhood memory, the idea of God has been absent from results of my ability to reason—possibly because of a specific instance that I will elaborate on later—but the conclusive reality is that God doesn't exist. I accept the concept of God, rendering me Atheist as opposed to Agnostic, but I do not accept the probabilities of God as reason to believe in Him.

     Often, it is proposed that people either believe or disbelieve in God because of an event that's taken place that profoundly affected them either in that instance, or later on in life due to re-analyzation. Almost embarrassingly, this was true for me for years. When I was nine years old, my friend Elizabeth* passed away in the middle of the night from an unanticipated heart attack. Alone, her death left my religious ideas unaffected, although it did familiarize me with the bitter reality that death exists. I didn't know it then, but I sure practiced my current principle that "all events are impersonal, even death" [Epictetus]. Undeterred by my attempts, I couldn't shed a single tear the day I caught news of her death. I felt extremely disrespectful when I couldn't even make my eyes damp, while the class bully sitting to my left bawled his eyes bloodshot. I hid the fact that I couldn't cry by burying my face in my crossed arms because I was convinced that lacking dramatic emotion was something to be ashamed of. I only wish I had known then what I was accomplishing by letting that event harmlessly—outside of my dissipated guilt—pass me by.

*Name changed for confidentiality, although I couldn’t find a single article about her on Google. I concluded it is probably due to her family being very private, and this was in a time before the internet exploded in popularity.

     At the wake, my attitude remained aforesaid until I approached the casket. Before it stood her father—who to my understanding is or was some type of religious leader—who spoke to everyone before they bid final valedictions to Elizabeth’s mortal remains. Elizabeth’s father took my hand and looked deeply into my eyes before enlightening me on the "fact" that Elizabeth was in heaven now and that God was looking over her, and personally over me too. He informed me that God loved Elizabeth and me, but offered no explanation as to why her untimely death occurred because a factual explanation in relation to his God did not exist. It was then that tears drenched my cheeks because I knew that he was lying to my face**, but more barbarously, lying over the body of his dead child.

** Many people have undeserved respect for those that truly believe in something that's doing "no harm" (religion is common), but it is doing harm because any religious concept is just that, a concept, and I do not let those equal to me walk upon me with their beliefs. You do not need a book to differentiate right and wrong, believing so is ultimate human weakness. It’s a shame adults in positions of political power need religion to let them know that they shouldn’t kill their fellow man. Where does the separation of church and state exist there? The bottom line is, you can believe whatever you want, but unless I ask or express obvious interest, I could care less.

     As time and events carried on, I relived that moment multiple times, trying to produce a tangible belief on what happened that night that Elizabeth's father attempted to instill his values within me. I cursed him for lying to me because I know he lied to classmates my age that either already agreed with his ignorance, or do now because of his admittedly convincing speech. On the contrary, I thanked the idea of him for enlightening me on something he didn't intend— the closure I needed that God does not exist.

     Society labels it a pubescent conception to state, "If God existed, this wouldn't happen." In actuality, many adults still face the same question long after their hormones are in check, regardless of how vocal they are of their religious considerations. Impressionable society instructs teenagers to shut up in a manifold of practices whenever the idea that God might not exist because he wouldn't let horrible things happen is either declared or exhibited in the embodiment of a currently unanswerable investigation.

     Extraneous from Elizabeth's death, my theories have developed into category 6 Atheism. I suspect my close relatives and I both confirmed years ago that that's what I would unquestionably come to secure as personal truth.

     Despite my previous comparison of my religious realization to being born gay, do not confuse this with me having the idea that people are born of a specific belief, because that's not true at all. Like Dawkins clearly expressed in The God Delusion, "That is not a Muslim child, but a child of Muslim parents. That child is too young to know whether it is a Muslim or not. There is no such thing as a Muslim child. There is no such thing as a Christian child." My comparison lied in the similarity that I knew I lacked belief in God from a young age while co-existing with the impressionable beliefs of others.

     While I personally think it's a waste of time to speculate on things that can never be answered—or the probability of it being answered during my lifetime being extremely slim—I do find it essential to be exceptionally educated on topics without immediate conclusion like religion and extraterrestrial life. Composing factual answers doesn’t have to be my life’s work for me to be well educated in their core concepts. If something is to be under frequent speculation, it only makes logical and intelligent sense that I should examine it with more thoroughness than just knowing a definition to be a productive member of society.

     So now the difference is finally clear and I am cleansed of all instilled delusions. Claiming Agnosticism is foundationally claiming ignorance and denial in the idea of something very apparent throughout history [God]. Atheism is the more thought-through of the two disbeliefs in God because it acknowledges that God may certainly exist, but in belief He does not. I believe He— he does not.

Health care reform

     I don't know much about politics. I know the basics, but not as much as I should. Of course, I'm only seventeen, so the disappointment is more my own. When I start college I'll definitely be taking a politics class, even though I want my career to do nothing with politics. I feel that to be a productive member of society you need a common knowledge of politics, and how our country works. Being a democrat or a republican doesn't cut it if you don't even know what all that means. While I may not know how to explain socialism well enough that you can understand it, at least I can spell it.

As I was sitting down to watch the health care reform speech, I said with honesty, "I feel like if I got sick, our country would just let me die. It scares me because there's so many things they could deny me coverage for. Having drank alcohol, having done drugs, mental disorders, and especially self mutilation." I don't remember what my dad said in reply.

"What this plan will do is make the insurance you have work better for you. Under this plan, it will be against the law for insurance companies to deny you coverage because of a preexisting condition. As soon as I sign this bill, it will be against the law for insurance companies to drop your coverage when you get sick or water it down when you need it the most. They will no longer be able to place some arbitrary cap on the amount of coverage you can receive in a given year or in a lifetime. We will place a limit on how much you can be charged for out-of-pocket expenses, because in the United States of America, no one should go broke because they get sick. And insurance companies will be required to cover, with no extra charge, routine checkups and preventive care, like mammograms and colonoscopies because there's no reason we shouldn't be catching diseases like breast cancer and colon cancer before they get worse. That makes sense, it saves money, and it saves lives."

     Shock washed over my body, tingling me all over. If I wanted to jump up and shout in that moment, I couldn't. I was frozen. Speechless and on the verge of tears, I looked up at my dad who was standing behind the couch. He looked away from Obama then down at me and just said with the same look of disbelief, "Holy shit."

     Think now of how many fundraisers you come across for the terminally ill. Think of how many parents of children with issues like heart problems and cancer, have to leave their children to try and raise enough money to give them the care they need. Often, they don't raise enough money and their children die. This will never have to happen again. Instead of trying to raise just enough money, parents can be at their children's bedside while they get the treatment they deserve as an American.

     Don't shoot me down for getting hopeful because even if this never happens, no President has ever taken this leap to at least try. Take your negativity elsewhere, because it's not welcome here.

     I am happy that I won't have to die. I am happy that Barack Obama is our President.