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Here’s a true lesson in critical thinking and common sense. This is how is done. Period.

New one from Pat. Probably his most brutal on Islam so far.

Life could indeed be beautiful and just a thought of dying could be enough to put you in a temporary state of depression. Most of us like to live. We love life and want more of it, but at the same time we’re all aware that one day we’re all going to die. Every human on this planet knows, that one day they will too cease to exist. Some people are terrified by this, but some just accept it and are fine with it, while on the other hand majority of us wants and needs to know if there’s life after.

Let’s first look at the facts and what we DO know about death:

1. Heart stops and cells get deprived from oxygen so cells start irreversible process of dying
2. Lungs cease to function and person stops breathing
3. If CPR is not administered within 6 minutes brain starts to die from lack of oxygen.
4. After 10 minutes brain damage is certain and irreversible
5. Muscles starts to stiffen and body begins to cool down
6. Skin and bone cells die latest and could survive up to 36 hours without oxygen
7. After 36 hours (and extensive tests) person is pronounced brain dead and there’s nothing that could be done for him/her anymore.
8. No one has ever came back after 72 hours of his/hers heart stopping.
9. Your body decompose and you eventually cease to exists
10. Your molecules and atoms become part of the soil and eventually end up in rivers, water air and perhaps some other person’s or animals body.

To describe the process medically we use fancy latin names like following:

• Pallor mortis, paleness which happens almost instantaneously (in the 15–120 minutes after the death)
• Algor mortis, the reduction in body temperature following death. This is generally a steady decline until matching ambient temperature
• Rigor mortis, the limbs of the corpse become stiff (Latin rigor) and difficult to move or manipulate
• Livor mortis, a settling of the blood in the lower (dependent) portion of the body
• Decomposition, the reduction into simpler forms of matter

Doctors use instruments like Electroencephalography (EEG) or intracranial EEG (icEEG) to determine that there’s no electrical activity in the brain before they pronounce person brain dead or dead. Once these devices stop detecting brain activity, that’s it. Person is dead, and the process is irreversible.

You might say that this applies only to the body itself and not the soul. Well, neither me or you nor anyone else knows what the soul is. Let alone if it exists, so like I said let’s stick with what we DO know.
As you know it, your body (matter) cannot just disappear (second law of thermodynamics prevents that), but it can turn into energy or some other form of matter. If you consider this kind of energy to be soul then so be it, but that’s not really living after death and it will not be point of this article. I am assuming that when majority of people are talking about life after death, they’re talking about consciousness living. In other words, they would be aware they’re alive.

Sometimes belief in life after death could be overwhelming that it would be hard to put it in words. I’m sure we all had following conversation with our parents, friends or just acquaintances. I will describe brief dialog between myself and my mom:

Mom: ” So you believe that after we die we just go into the ground, decompose and eventually disappear.”
Me: “I really don’t know but yes, based on what we do know today that is what happens.”
Mom: We don’t feel anything and nothing happens afterwards?
Me: “Yes”
Mom: “But that cannot be”
Me: “why not?”
Mom: ” Because it cannot”
Me: “Why do you think that cannot be?”
Mom: “There has to be something.”
Me: “What?”
Mom: “Something. There’s just has to be.”
Me: “But what?”
Mom: “I don’t know what, but I cannot just go into the ground and just seize to exist. Something has to happen. There has to be something more.”
And goes on and on…

Now, I consider my mom to be very rational person of above average intelligence and well read. She is not the only one who talks and thinks like that in conversation like these. We’re just terrified of loosing someone or leaving the loved ones behind. Sometime we want something so bad that it’s hard to put it in thoughts. Let alone words.

Now, consider following quote which comes from one of our greatest thinkers. Mark Twain:

“I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.” - Mark Twain

Can you remember time of the Napoleon or Roman empire? How about dinosaurs? Of course you cannot, because you did not exist back then. You also did not feel, taste, see or sense back then. You just weren’t here. You have no consciousness recollection on any of those events and you’re not bothered by it.
Mark Twain implies that you will experience same thing after you die. Nothing. For lots of people that is truly terrifying, but there’s something very comforting about what Mark is saying. To me this seems a lot more comforting then wandering around as a ghost, spirit or some kind of non-physical entity. Same thing goes for being stuck in some kind of purgatory or heaven and hell for eternity. Just think about it little further. Doing anything (no matter how beautiful and great) for eternity seems like a torture to me.
Let me give you personal example. I really love playing guitar. I can play guitar for hours, but after six or seven hours it becomes boring and then pure torture. Imagine doing it for eternity! Even something as good as sex will get boring and eventually become true torture. Literary. Think about it. Physically burning in hell will eventually will be equal to having sex. That’s something I never though will hear myself say.

Good number of scientists and theologians believe that we cannot fully answer question life after death without fully explaining the consciousness. So far good number of tests and experiments are conducted and most of them point to conscientiousness being tied directly to brain functions. For example: reason why you cannot remember when you were one year old is because your brain wasn’t fully developed. Basically you weren’t conscious back then. Another example would be that if I would to hit you in the head you would loose conscientiousness and would not remember anything at all while unconscious. Yet, another even more convincing example is that it is the known fact that brain damage could change person’s personality. All of these point to the brain.

Can consciousness survive death? If consciousness is indeed just a brain function then no, it cannot survive death, but If consciousness is more than brain function then where would this consciousness reside? Is consciousness nothing more then our neurons firing at the certain order? Consciousnesses could also just be a measure to describe brain activity. Just like a meter is measurement of distance. You cannot touch or feel meter. Truth is, we really don’t know but lot of smart people are working on it.

What do I think?

We really have no examples of consciousness existing outside of the brain, so why anyone would want to suppose such a thing in a first place. I think fear of unknown plays a huge part in this. Also, not all of us are equipped to deal with harsh realities in same way. Some of us cope with the unknown in totally different ways. Let me name some of them: resurrection, reincarnation, incarnation, heaven and hell, ghosts, NDE (Near Death experiences), 72 virgins (I am being serious here), zombies and probably hundreds of other interesting and inventive ways of surviving death. It became pretty much cultural. Different cultures have their own way of dealing with loss, grief and fear of the unknown.
My personal opinion is that if we (regular schmo’s) worry too much about all possible things that might come after we die, we will miss out on all of the good things in the only life we do know. I just don’t think it’s a good idea to live your life trying to conform to something you have no way of knowing exists. Sometimes it’s ok to say “I just don’t know”, and get on with your current life. The only thing that is going to be left behind you that we DO know is your legacy and deeds you did in this life.

One of the most confusing arguments today is fine-tuning argument. How is it that the universe is so finely tuned to support life? Everything is at the right distance from everything or nothing would work. Psychical constants are so tight that any variation would bring chaos. Earth is exactly the right distance from the sun so it doesn’t get burned or cooled. If for example nuclear force was only few percent different, it would alter configuration of the stars which in turn would not be able to support the life as we know it. If expansion rate of the universe is larger: no galaxies would form if smaller: universe would collapse, even before stars formed.
There are hundreds of examples like this, and at the first look it does look amazing and impossible. That’s because it is impossible. Chances that the Universe fine tuned itself for our existence is highly improbable and it’s bordering on fantastical improbability.

But this fine-tuning argument is so flawed and answer to me seems so simple that I am really puzzled how some people (including some scientists) do not see it. Answer is following:

It’s all matter of perspective. People who are amazed by this fine-tuning argument are looking at it from the opposite point of view. They’re assuming that we were already existed here and ready to go and universe just showed up and fine tuned itself around our existence so it could sustain us. Or that the Universe popped into existence with us humans in mind. That would indeed be amazing. Universe did not fine-tune itself for us, but it was the other way around. It was the opposite way. Universe was already here and we’re the ones who evolved to fit within that form. Not only us, but stars, galaxies and everything else. If universe was any different, we would’ve just evolved into something different or not exist at all. Galaxies would look different or would not exist. And it’s simple as that. Really. Change you perspective and everything drastically changes.
Another analogy might be in order.
Professor of physics used the firing squad analogy:

A man is due to be executed by firing squad.
No man in the squad has ever missed before.
However on this occasion they all do.
The condemned man is interviewed afterwards and is asked how he feels about this amazing coincidence that everyone in the firing squad has missed.
He replies:

“Of course they missed or I wouldn’t be here talking to you!”

Following article is just for mind and logic exercise purposes.
Debate over if we humans have free will at all is old and debated to a pulp, and trust me it will not get settled here in this article. However, following arguments will show you that the universe with omniscient and omnipotent being, call it God if you like, free will is highly improbable, by any standard of human logic we use in today’s world. I will use omnipotence and omniscience terms strictly taken from dictionary, but for the sake of abbreviation and familiarity I will call it God.
From dictionary:

omniscient all-knowing (possesed of universal or complete knowledge)
omnipotent all-powerful (an agency or force of unlimited power)

Since God is omniscient (all knowing) that would mean that He knows past, present and future. And not only that but He knows everything else, including where every atom, electron, neutron and proton is located in the universe at any time. He is also omnipotent. Which means that He can also create and manipulate all matter and energy at will. (Logicians would probably stop right here and close the book, but lets play along and see what comes out of this.)
With that in mind, lets explore Adolf Hitler for a moment.

In the beginning (no pun intended) God could’ve created a universe in which:

• Adolf Hitler was bad (causing millions of deaths) or
• Adolf Hitler was good (lets say he decided to become a ballerina).

Omnipotent being could create either one of those universes, or a million different ones for that matter. As we know now, God creates a world with bad Adolf Hitler. It looks like Adolf Hitler did not have any choice in his course of actions since God already made universe with bad Hitler in mind. Did Adolf Hitler really have any choice here?
Lets see counter-arguments first.

You might counter this argument with following:

“God did not cause Hitler to become bad, God only knew that Hitler was going to become bad”.

In other words, God knew what Hitler was going to do (since God is omniscient), but He did not cause him to do it, he just let it happen (there goes your all-loving argument too).
Fair enough, but this argument is flawed. Here’s how.
Not only that God KNEW, but He also CREATED the world with evil Hitler. Every action starting from the beginning of creation of the universe leading to Hitler being bad was set in motion and was predetermined by God at the beginning of creation. Remember this. In other words, God had to put things in motion at the beginning with evil Hitler in mind, which eventually led to Hitler becoming evil tyrant. It’s a simple law of cause-and-effect. Hitler did not have any choice whatsoever, because if Hitler did have any choice and lets say chose to be good, that would mean that God’s plan to create evil Hitler failed and therefore God is not omnipotent. God not only knew the future but actually placed things in motion. He caused it. He is the Creator after all. At best He made Hitler make bad choice.
You might try to counter this argument with weak analogies like: “I know that the sun will rise tomorrow, but I did not caused it to rise, nor can I prevent it from rising”.
Fallacies right from the start.
First, you do not have a power to create the sun or stop it from rising for that matter, and you’re not omniscient. Therefore you cannot use yourself in analogy. We’re talking about omniscient and omnipotent being. It’s logical fallacy to argue like that. You cannot use non-omniscient person to prove omniscient theory which contains omniscient entity. It doesn’t make any sense.
And more importantly you DO NOT know for a fact that sun will rise tomorrow (again since you’re not omniscient). It’s highly unlikely that sun will explode, gets swallowed by a black hole or that the earth will get knocked out of its orbit, but you really DO NOT know for a fact that sun will rise tomorrow, so you cannot use that argument.

You can also use my child argument which goes like this: “I’ve created my child, but it was his/hers choice to become a gangster. It was his/hers free will”.
For one, you did not create your child with him/her in mind of becoming a gangster. God DID create universe with bad Hitler in mind.
Secondly, you did not have any power or knowledge to create your child as a gangster ahead of time. God DID have power and knowledge ahead of time. So most of the arguments here are deeply flawed.

Or you can use something more logical like following argument (I’ve seen this one a lot):
“if I put a bowl of ice-cream and a bowl of cauliflower in front of my child, I know for a fact which one is chosen, the ice cream. My knowing it ahead of time does not restrict my child from making a free choice when the time comes. My child is free to make a choice and knowing the choice has no effect upon her when she makes it.”
Lets see if you can spot fallacy here. No?
He is right. Knowing that something is going to happen ahead of time doesn’t make it actually happen, but that does not apply if YOU were the cause of something happening. Like putting ice cream ball in front of your child! Just by putting an ice cream ball in front of your child, YOU caused your child to eat the ice cream. You were the cause. If you weren’t there, then you would not be able to put ice cream in front of her. But again, you’re not omniscient being and you don’t know what will happen in the future so you could not use that argument anyway. If you throw meat and candy in front of the lion, lion will eat meat. There’s no choice. All you did was fed meat to the lion. You did not gave it a choice. You’re the one that caused lion to eat meat.

You would have better argument if you said that you’ve placed a ball of ice cream of vanilla flavor and chocolate flavor in front of your child, and child picked vanilla based on her free will. But there’s no way of knowing what instrument (instinct, appetite, intuition, free will) child was using in picking vanilla over chocolate so you cannot use this argument to prove anything. I also cannot use it to disprove free will, and I am not. Remember what I said at the beginning: “following arguments will show you that the universe with omniscient and omnipotent being, call it God if you like, free will is highly improbable” Argument with ice cream does not assume there’s omniscient and omnipotent being present.
Another argument you might have is that God can know all your actions but chooses not to. If that’s the case then God is not omniscient since there’s something He doesn’t know.

Beside, no one chooses to be bad or evil. Just think of the absurdity in logic here. If I gave you two choices:

1. Be good and spend entire eternity in paradise or
2. Be bad and burn in Hell for eternity.

If you really think there’s choice here, you’re need to see a shrink. What do you think would be a percentage of people that chose number 2? Maybe few schizophrenics and some masochist, but it would be minimal. That’s certainly not the case when we see choices people make in everyday lives. It actually looks like they don’t have any choices. Otherwise we would see huge percentage of people choosing the right path. This of course is all assuming that omnipotent and omniscient being actually exists.

Yet another argument is: “God sees all the potential possibilities we could take, and we get to choose which path“. So essentially, God gives you lots of options and it’s up to you to choose whichever you want.
This is also flawed since God already started the universe He wanted (see evil Hitler argument) and all your choices are predetermined and known ahead of time. God does not only sees potential possibilities, He acts upon one of those possibilities by creating the world we live in right now.

Conclusion

Just looking at it logically, there cannot be all-knowing and all-powerful being in our universe with us humans having a free will at the same time. Not only that, but claiming that all-knowing and all-powerful entity is not being responsible for any of our actions would be logical contradiction of enormous proportions.
That would be the same as if I would to create faulty circuit which I know for sure would cause fire but created it anyway, and circuit indeed caused fire. And then later on blamed that circuit for the problem by invoking a free will. No logic in that at all. Circuit did not have any choice here.
Think of it in simpler terms: All-powerful God creates world knowing that there will be suffering and all other bad stuff but he does it anyway, and then blames objects of His creations (us) for something He started and had previous knowledge of what was going to happen.
Knowing His own future actions, as well as every future occurrence in His own creation, and then actually putting all that into motion effectively eliminates the existence of free will. Therefore you cannot have both: free will and all-knowing and all-powerful entity at the same time.
There’s really no way around this problem. The only way for free will to exists is if God is omnipotent but not omniscient or vica-versa. But then again problem of omniscient and omnipotent being itself is logical fallacy. Logic simply breaks down. At least logic in the world we occupy. Logic we as humans learned. But what other worlds or logic you going to use? This is all we know so we have to debate the issue with what we know and understand.
There are so many contradictions and logical fallacies in theories like these that it’s going to make your head spin, but if you do have a valid argument I would love to hear it. Before you do, please read the article one more time so you don’t present same arguments but in a different skin.
Question still remains. Do humans (or any other animals for that matter) have a true free will (not predetermined by anything internal like your genetics and external like God) or we’re all just driven by cause-and-effect i.e. our instincts, appetites, desires, ability to anticipate, genetics and external causes?

New one from Pat Condell. Little harsh, but right to the point.

New one from our friend Pat Condell. I loved the part about Tom Cruise’s height.

Seventy five percent of Americans are God-fearing Christians.
Seventy five percent of prisoners are God-fearing Christians.

Ten percent of Americans are atheists
0.2% of prisoners are atheists

Something is truly wrong here. And I don’t mean numbers.

Bill Maher at his best. Love the part about Christopher Columbus.

“A fire-breathing dragon lives in my garage”

Suppose (I’m following a group therapy approach by the psychologist Richard Franklin) I seriously make such an assertion to you. Surely you’d want to check it out, see for yourself. There have been innumerable stories of dragons over the centuries, but no real evidence. What an opportunity!

“Show me,” you say. I lead you to my garage. You look inside and see a ladder, empty paint cans, an old tricycle — but no dragon.

“Where’s the dragon?” you ask.

“Oh, she’s right here,” I reply, waving vaguely. “I neglected to mention that she’s an invisible dragon.”

You propose spreading flour on the floor of the garage to capture the dragon’s footprints.

“Good idea,” I say, “but this dragon floats in the air.”

Then you’ll use an infrared sensor to detect the invisible fire.

“Good idea, but the invisible fire is also heatless.”

You’ll spray-paint the dragon and make her visible.

“Good idea, but she’s an incorporeal dragon and the paint won’t stick.” And so on. I counter every physical test you propose with a special explanation of why it won’t work.

Now, what’s the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there’s no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? Your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true. Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder. What I’m asking you to do comes down to believing, in the absence of evidence, on my say-so. The only thing you’ve really learned from my insistence that there’s a dragon in my garage is that something funny is going on inside my head. You’d wonder, if no physical tests apply, what convinced me. The possibility that it was a dream or a hallucination would certainly enter your mind. But then, why am I taking it so seriously? Maybe I need help. At the least, maybe I’ve seriously underestimated human fallibility. Imagine that, despite none of the tests being successful, you wish to be scrupulously open-minded. So you don’t outright reject the notion that there’s a fire-breathing dragon in my garage. You merely put it on hold. Present evidence is strongly against it, but if a new body of data emerge you’re prepared to examine it and see if it convinces you. Surely it’s unfair of me to be offended at not being believed; or to criticize you for being stodgy and unimaginative — merely because you rendered the Scottish verdict of “not proved.”

Imagine that things had gone otherwise. The dragon is invisible, all right, but footprints are being made in the flour as you watch. Your infrared detector reads off-scale. The spray paint reveals a jagged crest bobbing in the air before you. No matter how skeptical you might have been about the existence of dragons — to say nothing about invisible ones — you must now acknowledge that there’s something here, and that in a preliminary way it’s consistent with an invisible, fire-breathing dragon.

Now another scenario: Suppose it’s not just me. Suppose that several people of your acquaintance, including people who you’re pretty sure don’t know each other, all tell you that they have dragons in their garages — but in every case the evidence is maddeningly elusive. All of us admit we’re disturbed at being gripped by so odd a conviction so ill-supported by the physical evidence. None of us is a lunatic. We speculate about what it would mean if invisible dragons were really hiding out in garages all over the world, with us humans just catching on. I’d rather it not be true, I tell you. But maybe all those ancient European and Chinese myths about dragons weren’t myths at all.

Gratifyingly, some dragon-size footprints in the flour are now reported. But they’re never made when a skeptic is looking. An alternative explanation presents itself. On close examination it seems clear that the footprints could have been faked. Another dragon enthusiast shows up with a burnt finger and attributes it to a rare physical manifestation of the dragon’s fiery breath. But again, other possibilities exist. We understand that there are other ways to burn fingers besides the breath of invisible dragons. Such “evidence” — no matter how important the dragon advocates consider it — is far from compelling. Once again, the only sensible approach is tentatively to reject the dragon hypothesis, to be open to future physical data, and to wonder what the cause might be that so many apparently sane and sober people share the same strange delusion.