Why I am an Atheist (part three)

This is part three of this article, here you can find parts one and two.

Part III: Indoctrination, endemic of a delusional mind 

As children, we are bombarded constantly with an endless barrage of information. We tend to put a lot of trust in our parents as guardians of the truth. As I've said before, for children the world is a much smaller place than the one we as adults come to know. The mind of a child is much like the surface of a sponge, and like water to a sponge, information is the thing that fills the brain. But not all information is good information, in fact most information is probably bad information, and as children we have no real sense of this struggle of good and bad, for children all information has an equal footing.

To a child who has never seen a pot of boiling water, he or she could easily be convinced to place their hand in that pot even as steam is clearly seen emerging from its top. This isn't because children by nature are unintelligent, but rather ignorant to the world they are experiencing. It is incumbent upon us as adults and parents to educate our children to the good and the bad.


To a child, fear is a concept that has no place in their world, their minds having never experienced it, have no concept of what it means to be afraid. There is something primal that can certainly be applied to a given situation, for instance, a child having never been punched in the face by a bully might run, when faced with the prospect of such a thing, even though that child having never experienced it, should have nothing to fear. However, although it is easy to say that the child was afraid, it is much more complex than that, the child is only reacting to the chemical release of adrenaline and the emotional response of neuropeptides being released into the bloodstream by the hypothalamus gland located in the brain.

This instinct to run is something that has been built into our brains through millions of years of evolution. It should be noted however, that there is nothing special about this kind of behavior as it is found in all species of animal on the planet Earth, built into the primitive, most primal, R-complex or reptilian part of the brain, known as the basil ganglia. There is, of course another part of this emotional response that plays off of the reaction to run, and that is the reaction to stay. Although it isn't really clear why some prefer to stay and others prefer to run, this reaction is classified as the fight or flight response, and it is one of the most basic emotional responses a brain can have in any given situation when faced with imminent danger.

Now you may wonder why a child who has never been burned, may place their hand in a pot of boiling water and discover a new danger, but a child who has never been bullied has the instinct to run when faced with a punch to the face? The thing to understand here is that humans, although certainly more advanced in every way to all other animals of the world, we are still animals nonetheless. Our reactions to danger are dictated by primal instinct, an emotional response that has evolved over millions of years.

Our responses to other animals, as opposed to inanimate objects are clearly discernible, after all a tiger baring his teeth, is much more frightening than a toaster. Having never seen a tiger or a toaster, one could argue a child would respond to the sight of a tiger much like any adult, and react to the sight of a toaster in just the same way. Of course, this is a hypothesis for which there will be no evidence gathered, as likely no one would put a child in the same room as a tiger, to see what kind of reaction can be elicited.

Many factors must also be considered by the brain when faced with danger, but maybe none more important than the size of the thing for which a child is afraid. A good example of this can be seen as although most children might run away from the sight of a tiger, the sight of a cat, may illicit an opposite reaction. Clearly, to an observer a cat and a tiger bare much of a resemblance, the sharp teeth, tabby paws, long twisting tail, and predator slit eyes, but unless you have had a bad experience with cats in the past, or have an allergic reaction to them, their size alone dictates how you might respond to a chance meeting with one, a response I might point out, the cat will also most certainly share. Y

ou may have heard the old adage size matters, well in these cases, it really does. Again, I must point out that the reaction to run, is in some ways equal to the reaction to stay in a given situation, and for whatever reason, in some brains, a child when faced with the hiss of a tiger who is baring his teeth and claws, may choose not to run. Of course, any child likely to do this, would be a prime example of Darwinism at work, after all, the one who runs today, can stay alive to fight another day, but certainly any child who chooses to face a tiger today, will likely be its prey.

As a very small child, I have very few memories, but I do recall an occasion in which I placed a penny into a light-bulb socket, while the light was plugged in. You might ask yourself what would possess anyone to do such a thing, but you must understand it is the inquisitive nature of children that allows such ignorance, possible. So with the light plugged in, and the light-bulb removed, I slowly placed the penny in the socket.

The only thing that I can think of that makes sense as to why I tried this was the fact that pennies are round, the socket is round, and much like the games young children play, you are taught to put the small round object through the small round hole. In a fraction of a second, I was introduced to a concept that had never occurred to me before, electricity. Now I may not have known what this was but I felt its power, throughout my body, as my hand allowed the arching electric current to pass freely through me. In that moment I learned a lesson that still haunts me to this day, electric shock...sucks.

When I try to think about what I most fear, not many things actually come to mind, but if I were faced with the possibility of being shocked I can tell you,  my reaction would seem utterly irrational for sure. Although, one occasion of electric shock should suffice to keep most people away from it ever happening again, I have had the misfortune of being shocked several times, and this has left an indelible impression of electricity that won't ever go away. One of my more memorable instances of being shocked came when I was around thirteen. I was at a friend's house playing basketball in the driveway with neighborhood kids and it started to rain. Everyone gathered their things and proceeded to head inside the house. My friend's mother asked me to grab the dog and bring him inside with me. Next to the driveway was a small square plot of cement where a shed once existed, on one side of the plot was a metal pipe protruding from the ground, a plug box affixed to the end. The dog had been been chained up to the house, but had gotten his chain wrapped around the pipe that protruded from the ground. Unable to actually get loose, the dog simply rested himself there on the cement.

Now at this point, I had been shocked at least a couple of times, and I was clearly weary of touching a metal chain, wrapped around a metal pipe, that rested upon a metal plug box. So I walked over to the door where everyone was situated and asked, “That looks like an electric box, am I going to be shocked?” “No, the electric company said it wasn't functioning anymore, so you should be fine,” she replied. So I put my trust in her words, after all, she said that the electric company said it was not working, so it should be fine. What didn't occur in my thinking and clearly should have, was her use of the word should, which went in one ear and came out the other, it seems. So without a second thought, I latched onto the chain and began to try and pull it away from the pipe it was wrapped around.

Now, I don't really remember much of what happened after that, at least not for a few minutes, but I've been told that I reached a height of air, I had never reached while playing basketball. I was literally lifted from my feet in seconds and tossed backwards onto the ground. I remember the intense pain with which the unforgiving electricity passed through me and for which horrible memories have been implanted into my consciousness forever. The dog was fortunately very lucky, he was none the wiser to what had happened, and I was glad for that fact, as I imagine, had the dog suffered even a small bit of what I had received, this twenty-five pound animal might not have survived it, and his death at my hands might have haunted me even to this day.

Childhood is a time in the life of a child where they are open to possibilities that can not be considered even later in life as adults. It is said that the cognitive abilities of children, far exceed that of adults and if evolution is still at work anywhere, it is in the minds of children where it can be readily found. I was watching the television once, and I turned it on to a conversation a woman was having with someone else about the state of her children as it related to their education. She was inquiring what she needed to do as a parent to help her kids learn. The other person gave a short cookie-cutter response to the inquiry that involved some talk about forcing the child to study more or taking away their toys to give them better focus on the objectives.

What occurred to me in that moment was that a child's mind is, as I've said much like a sponge, but more so, like a sponge without the restriction of immobility that a sponge has. A child can do all the things he or she wants to do and will do them, if not interrupted. When I look back to some of the things I did as a child, it occurs to me, although I did not know it then, that I was applying science to the world as I observed it. All children do this, everyday, all the time. A boy might wonder, what would happen if I jumped out of this tree? The boy may look down and think he could easily break a limb, or maybe not? It is then that he considers the hypothesis that forms the basis of an experiment. So the boy leaps from the tree, the experimentation of the hypothesis, he supposed. And as the boy had considered, he breaks his leg, an observation he has now made.

So in these few moments the boy has applied a scientific method and has not have even realized it. Again, this happens all the time. Children frequently shock themselves, as I did, others put their hands in the boiling pot and others still, find more interesting ways to experiment with their environment. It is at a fundamental level the inquisitive nature of a child to apply a scientific method to his or her world. What we discover is that a child is most held back by the adults in his or her life who believe that they are doing the most good by bringing such experimentation to an end.

Now, I am not suggesting that a parent should allow their child to burn themselves, jump from a great height or otherwise put themselves in danger. The role of a parent should be, to be no more repressive with their intentions than is needed to secure the safety of their child, and to allow their child to freely explore a natural affinity to use the brain they have to learn and comprehend the nature of the environment in which they thrive. It is adults to which children look to for guidance, precisely in those times when a child is unsure of something.

It is at these times when a child's mind is most open to influence. It is, as I suppose, that the mind of a child is the mind of scientist and if cultivated properly can be used to further such ends, but as you shall soon read, not all parents cultivate such things, and some further do harm by oppressing the natural urge to be scientific by exposing the child to the very antithesis of scientific reason...the delusion of faith.

We have all seen images of the picket line at an abortion clinic, at the funeral of a gay soldier; or at a school where a science teacher has chosen to teach evolution over creationism. Amongst all the rhetoric and hate we see signs confessing the most evil of intent, and when we look, often times we see it held by the small hands of a child. This child if asked, will proclaim a hatred for such things as abortionists, fags and atheists, hate filled speech of the worst kind, but we must take such speech from a child with a grain of salt, after all, the child is merely reaffirming the words spoken by the parents of such children.

A young child, is unable to comprehend the words they are repeating, and although it is certainly hurtful to hear such things spoken from the mouth of such a small being, one must take comfort in knowing that should such a child be removed from that situation, that child could easily be made to never speak of such things again. However, in this country we are not in the habit of removing children from their parents merely on the basis of promoting such hate, though it should be said, that should that child grow up to harm another human being, induced by the words of a parent, than ultimately that parent is responsible for that harm, and should this induced person ever be brought to trial for their behavior so should that parent.

Now you may recoil at the very idea that I am suggesting. In this country, we believe that a person is responsible for their own actions, and as such should be held accountable. But let's consider a few things. The government often takes steps to remove children who are in danger of being harmed, and will often institutionalize a person who is deemed not fit for society. So why should we assume that the government could not take a child out of a home where the parents are promoting not only the deliberate hatred of others, but as is often the case, educating that child to the ways of a religion that promotes violence to be taken to solve a perceived problem.

After all, the same people who stand outside the abortion clinics screaming hate filled rhetoric as the doctors and patients enter the clinic, are the same people who praise the actions of terrorists who murder the doctors and bomb those clinics. Teaching your child to not only hate a particular group of society, but also teaching them that murder is a justification for abortion, is in my opinion, harmful, and if this is in fact deemed to be the truth, than the government would be justified in taking just such a child from the home. We have, as I see it a problem in this country with placing blame where it ought to be placed.

If an adolescent boy finds a gun laying on a shelf in his father's closet, takes that gun to school and accidentally shoots a classmate with it, in some states depending on the age of the boy and the circumstance of the shooting, that boy could be charged with murder and tried as an adult. This to me seems both ridiculous and fruitless, as it will not bring back the life of the dead child, and at the same time aim to punish a boy who is developmentally incapable of truly understanding his actions.

And although the blame for this act, should fall on the father of this boy who left his gun laying on the shelf of a closet, not in a gun-safe, or having a triggerlock, which in either case would have prevented this, but instead we will punish the boy.  Even if this boy is able to understand his actions, he is at an age where his mind hasn't fully developed, and the person he is now, is not the person he will be in twenty-five years, when he may be eligible for parole, if he is convicted.

Although its easy to understand the reasoning for putting a man in prison for life, for committing heinous acts of murderous violence, I fail to see the logic in putting a boy in prison for making a mistake, that otherwise would not have been made except for the inaction of an irresponsible parent. Christian scientists have maintained a religious tradition of not allowing their children to receive medical care when needed, instead, resorting to prayer as a means to heal them, that has resulted in the death of many children. Such parents have been tried and convicted of criminally negligent homicide, meaning if not for the negligence of that parent, the child would otherwise still be alive.

This begs the question, wouldn't it have been a reasonable step by the government to take the child away from parents who chose to adhere to this doctrine, resulting in the possible survival of that child, rather than leave the child to parents who's answer to an obvious appendicitis, is to pray for the pain to stop, and put them in jail after the child has died?

Now not every child raised by bad parents turns out to be a serial killer, just as not every child raised by good parents turns out to be a decent, loving, caring, human being. Some serial killers have been shown to have had good parents, and so some people would argue that, it should be proof enough that children should never be removed from their home, in spite of bad parenting.

The act of indoctrination is defined as bestowing upon someone, the ideas, opinions, and beliefs of a particular group, at the same time ignoring all other ideas, opinions and beliefs. Religious indoctrination occurs when a person or persons indoctrinates someone to believe in their religious beliefs, disregarding evidence to the contrary, and ignoring a reasonable proposition. I would argue, that such indoctrination of a child during their formative years is a form of abuse, that although does not certainly rise to the level of the physical abuse of a child, its certainly an abuse of the mind and its implication can be felt long after the child has reached adulthood.

A properly indoctrinated child, can and will not only continue to advance the cycle of indoctrination to their own children, but do so without a second thought, as part of their belief system, its not only their right, but their duty as parents and good religious folk. A child who is not removed from such a situation during those years where they are most susceptible to such influence, is destined to become a sheep in the flock, called religion.

Many people may argue that religion is not particularly harmful, an argument which I will attempt to dismantle later on, but for now will say only this. As I mentioned before, the government institutionalizes people for their own protection, people who have been deemed non compos mentis, a latin term meaning, not of sound mind. Psychopathology is the study of mental illness. In Psychopathology, psychiatrists are taught to recognize many forms of delusion including one referred to as the grandiose delusion.

Delusions are firmly held beliefs that someone holds despite lack of evidence, and despite contradicting evidence. The grandiose delusion typically involves a person who believes themselves to be centrally special through fantastical means, usually involving science-fiction, supernatural or religious themes. If a person believed himself to be special because he is receiving special messages from a source that he thinks is God, would that not qualify just such a person as delusional?

By just such a technical description alone any psychiatrist would be justified in committing a person who believed that they heard the word of God, a contention most preachers maintain during Sunday church service. Beyond that, people often proclaim having felt God's touch or having been influenced by a voice they believed came from God. Would not all these people also be delusional? The problem, is that societal norms about religion have allowed the mass delusion of religion to continue, otherwise it would seem, many people would have been committed, possibly suffering from schizophrenic behavior.

What keeps me up at night isn't the little old lady who believes in God, as delusional as she is, she is in no position to harm anyone. What concerns me, is the intrusion of religion into the government. When we allow religious rhetoric to define public policy we are in serious trouble, and when a candidate for president is open about his beliefs as it pertains to the treatment of homosexuals and women, and no one logically considers this man insane and an opportunity for committal, that is what scares me.

For a year I rode the train into work everyday, one day, one of the conductors approached me while I was reading The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. I had never met this man before, other than the occasional greeting, as he punched my ticket. So this conductor came up to me and asked me about what I was reading. And I showed him the book, and said something about it being a good book for a long train ride to work. He told me that he had been watching me read the book now for days and didn't know whether he should approach me or not. I wasn't alarmed, but curious and I asked him, “Are you religious or atheist?” “Oh, I believe in God,” he replied. At which point I shrugged.

Being that this was a long train ride and I had at least 45 minutes to kill, I could tell the man to leave me alone and go back to my book, or have a conversation with the man, something he obviously really wanted. So I said, “Are you allowed to sit?” “Yes, can I take this seat in front of you?” he replied, taking off his conductor's hat. “No problem,” I said, “I'm always in the mood for good conversation.” He sat down and we began to chat about many things. He told me about his upbringing in a religious home, and the fact he was happy to bring God to his children. He spoke at length about how he actually enjoyed reading books like the book I was reading because it affirmed for him, his belief in the one true God.

He seemed to be quite an intelligent man, and although clearly delusional, I could see how he might be someone I could be friends with, even if we didn't share the same beliefs. I asked him what he thought about the parasitical nature of religion? He only said something to the effect of, “Isn't God great like that?” I then asked him about his stance on abortion, a topic which seemed to light a fire under these religious folks, to which he replied, “I don't take the advice of women who allege to know all about my prostate, so in turn I don't try to advise women on matters of their womb.” “That's a very unusually modern view to take in light of the opinion of most religious conservatives,” I said. “You'll find I'm quite atypical of most conservatives,” he replied.

So I asked him, “Well, what about executions?” “I believe if they did it, they deserve to go to prison, but beyond that, I, not being the judge, jury, or executioner, what right do I have to make judgments on such things?” “Are you sure you are one of those religious folks?” I asked. He laughed and we continued to talk. When I reached my stop, he told me that I should search for some book, for the life of me I can't remember it now, but he handed me a piece of paper with the name scribbled on it, and I stepped off the train. The next day I got on the train and got into my seat and the conductor approached looking to punch my ticket. After taking the ticket, he asked me, “Did you find that book?” “No, I'll just download a copy of it later,” I told him.

Of course, I was merely placating, I had no intention of doing such a thing, after all, it was sure to be full of religious nonsense, of which I can actively listen to, but for which reading too much about, causes me to fall asleep. He continued on, punching tickets down the line until he moved into the next car. I took out my book and continued where I had left off the previous day.

About fifteen minutes later, the conductor approached me from behind and asked if he could sit again, I put my book on the seat next to me and motioned to the seat in front of me. From his pocket he pulled out a piece of paper and handed it to me again, and like the previous slip of paper this one contained a list of book titles. “You should read those as well, they will help you to see,” he said. “See what?” I inquired. “The truth, of course,” he stated with an upward motioning hand gesture. I now understood what he was thinking, and I handed him back his piece of paper. “What's the problem?” he asked. “I don't mind us having a conversation but let's make a deal, you don't try to convert me to Christianity and I won't try to convert you to atheism,” I replied.

The man placed his hand over his mouth, and rubbed his chin repeatedly. With a clearly heard grunt of disappointment, he agreed. Over the next few days we debated many things, all religious in nature of course, and he held firm in his beliefs as I held firm in mine. One of the more fervent arguments came while discussing the Pledge of Allegiance. I was of the opinion that any such pledge that involved a deity should not be forced upon children in public schools.

The public school system is funded by tax dollars, which make it a social program run by the government. Being that the government was involved and we should respect the separation of church and state, forcing children to pledge their allegiance to God in a public school equated to, in my opinion, a violation of the constitution. He believed otherwise of course, and stated that no such provision can be found in the constitution. He was right, of course, no such provision can be found in the constitution because Jefferson didn't include it. However, Jefferson in authoring the constitution, made his intent clear in a response to a letter from the Danbury Baptist Church, in 1802:

"... I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between Church and State."

Although, Jefferson did not include those words specifically in the constitution, he felt that it should be understood, and his reply to the Danbury Baptist Church reiterated just that point. Having known that the Pledge of Allegiance was not always a pledge to God and country, but unsure of its original wording, I grabbed my phone and proceeded to look up the information on the Internet.

In 1954, pressured by a letter from a religious leader to President Truman two years previous, Congress enacted a bill to change the words of the pledge to include the words under God, a bill President Eisenhower than signed, June the 14th, Flag day. The curious part came when I began to read about its origins. The Pledge of Allegiance was actually created by a man named Francis Bellamy, a devout Christian and Baptist minister, who was looking for a pledge that could be recited in under 15 seconds by any school child. The original pledge contained no reference to God, in fact, the inclusion of god in the pledge would have undermined the point of the pledge itself. The pledge was meant to swear one's allegiance to his country and to the principles for which it stands. You would think in 1892, if the Baptist minister of a church felt God was important to the ideals of the country, he would have included just such a thing.

The discussion moved further into the area of politics, at which point I said, “The founders of this country would not be happy about the state of the union today.” He replied, “The government has always been a Christian government, and it always will be.” Not much angers me, but mixing religion and politics is just one of those things that really stirs something in me. “This country may have been founded in a nation populated by Christians, but the founders themselves were mostly atheists,” I said firmly. “They were not atheists, they were Christians,” he replied.

It seems in this we were both wrong, although some of the founders were Christians, not all were, and neither were they all atheists. Although many of them had religious beliefs, none of them held firmly the belief that religion should be integrated with government. It seems this notion of a Christian state is derived from the belief that if the Founders truly believed that government and religion should not be integrated than why is it not expressly prohibited in the constitution. Surely it would have been easy to simply write a few lines in there that expressed just such an opinion. We have to remember though, that the formation of any new government is surely a tumultuous time in its history. Just such a government would certainly fail without the support of its people. And although the founders themselves believed government and religion should be separate, just such a provision might have caused some displeasure with the religious factions that existed at the time.

Many people see the lack of an expression of separation as an interpretation of inclusion. The problem with that is, if the founders really wanted government and church to be integrated, it would have been just as easy to include a mention of this as it was to not include one. And of a particular problem for me is the fact that there is no mention of God at all in the constitution, in fact the only references that could be used at all in any religious context is the mention of the protection of religious freedom, as mentioned in the first amendment, and the words Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven, at the very bottom of the document, just above the signatures.

Other than these two references, there is no mention of God or anything religious in the entire document. People will also contend that the founders were obviously religious based on the premise that the Declaration of Independence makes several references to God. Contained within the Declaration of Independence are three references to what could be considered a general deism view of things, none of which actually make reference to the Christian God found in the bible. And maybe the best argument that can be made comes from the declaration itself which states that governments created by humanity derive their powers from the consent of the governed, not from any gods.

We continued to talk about religion over the next few weeks, until one day there was a new conductor. When I asked the new conductor what had happened to the other guy, he simply told me that conductors get moved from train to train. I saw him a few times later in the year, but we didn't talk much after that, and I stopped using the train after that, at which point I never saw him again. Some people think that debating things like evolution and cosmology with someone strongly religious is a little like debating a rock about its preference in cola. I however, much enjoy it, and it will take the opportunity whenever it presents itself to me.

In part four, I will attempt to dispel the notion of a creationist universe, and explain how life can come from a place with no life, and how a universe can come from a place of nothing.


UPDATE: You can find part four here

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Why I am an Atheist (part two)

This is part two of this article, you can find part one by following this link.

Part II: The Imagined, the fantastic, the miraculous and the ridiculous

As a child, I spent a lot of time living in my imagination, as I think most children do. I had a lot of toys when I was young, in fact rarely did a Christmas or birthday go by without receiving a complete set of some kind of toy. One Christmas it was M.A.S.K, another Voltron, and one Christmas I even got the complete set of these little bug guys with antennae on their head, called Sectaurs. It was kind of curious because I didn't ask for them, in fact I had no clue what they were, but I took great delight in the use of them in scaring my mother. There was one bug toy in particular that comes to mind, it was a weird plastic bug thing with a few legs, antennae and pincers.

You would take one of the toy bug people and mount him to a saddle that rested on the back of this bug, and you would insert your hand down a black sock like cloth mechanism that was fitted on the underside and allowed your fingers to be inserted into the back of this bug's head. It allowed you to work the bug much like a puppet and two rings attached on the inside could be pulled to open and close the pincers. As I said, receiving these toys from my mother was weirdly curious, after all, she made no secret her distaste for insects, arachnids, reptiles, or amphibians. In fact, as I recall, if it wasn't human she didn't really like it at all.


We never had pets growing up, though this might have more to do with the fact that my grandparents did not like them, than my parents, but of this I cannot be sure. I remember on one occasion, a gray cat having been curious, found its way on to the porch of our house. Being children, and not allowed to have pets and basically not allowed to play with animals, my younger brother and I would of course play with it. We started to feed it, which, although as a kid seems the right thing to do, as an adult I can appreciate why you don't do such a thing now. The cat returned day after day, meowing away, begging for food and purring when it received any kind of attention.

My father caught on to what was going on. He grabbed the cat, put it in the car, drove away and returned an hour later. Deeply unhappy at what was going on, both my brother and I questioned my father as to where the cat was, to which he replied, “I took it out to the woods and left it.” I can't really be sure what happened to the cat, but I had hoped wherever it was, it was happy and being fed. Thinking back, I wonder if my father really took it out to the woods as he said, or, and I hate to even think about it, disposed of the cat in some other way. My mother tells me, my father wouldn't have hurt the cat, of this I am unsure and will choose to believe her on that.

What's even more disturbing, years later a similar situation arose, now in my teen years, a skinny orange cat appeared on the porch crying, obviously hungry. And of course, I fed it, and it purred and rammed its little head into my hand, content in the love I had shown it. Not remembering the first time a cat appeared on my porch, I saw no need to hide what I was doing, and day after day the cat returned, crying and begging to be fed. When my dad found out, something different happened, he petted the cat and talked to it. He talked to it?

This was a man who as I remember it, had trouble talking to his own children, at least in any constructive manner. But as I remember it, he talked to it, much like a parent talks to a baby, and went on his way. Soon the cat was always on the porch, in fact, I doubt it ever needed to leave at all. As the weeks, then months went by, it went from the skinny cat to a fat cat. My father would bring it food and water and again, talk to it. The only thing I can say of this is that for whatever reason, something in him had either changed in his attitude towards small animals or something chemical or physical in his brain had changed. I presume the latter is most likely the answer, as a person suffering from Multiple Sclerosis(MS) finds memories, and attitudes change as the disease progresses. My mother would be quick to point out I'm sure, that I had a pet hermit crab, however, I do not consider this a pet, anymore than I would consider a rock a pet.

Although a hermit crab is cool to watch, the rare times it actually moves its shell, it is for the most part as much of a pet as a rock would be. You never really feed it, leaving its food in a bowl or corner is all that is needed. You can't really play with it, picking it up results in it jamming itself tightly into its shell so that nothing could pry it loose. Talking to it, you might as well be talking to a rock, you will certainly get the same reaction. As far as the crab is concerned, you are most likely a predator that wants to eat it, and it better keep clear of you.

As I said before my imagination as a kid led me to play with all kinds of things. From playing board games, to video games and sports. My younger brother and I and a bunch of kids in the neighborhood loved to play baseball in the park across the street from my house. It wasn't a park designed for baseball, but it was close and it had a design that created the illusion of a baseball park. Of course, this might have just been part of a kid's imagination at work.

During the summers we played baseball everyday, and as I recall I was quite good. My favorite baseball player was Mark Langston, a pitcher for the Seattle Mariners at the time, and even though I was a die-hard Boston Red Sox fan through and through, this did not matter, for whatever reason, this guy was my baseball idol. When I climbed our pseudo pitcher's mound, a bunch of dirt we piled in the middle of the park in the shape of a mound, I imagined I was Mark Langston always trying to get that illusive perfect game. In his career Langston never pitched a perfect game, but he is remembered as one of the all-time greats, having one of the best pickoff moves to first base.

After a few years, sports took a back-burner to something more interesting...role-playing games(RPGs). It was my older brother who first introduced me to the world of RPGs, the first being the game Dungeons & Dragons(D&D). Entire nights during the summers were dedicated to playing the game, sitting on the porch, drinking kool-aid and envisioning the worlds that existed only in this wondrous imaginary universe. Speaking with gamers now on the subject, I find most are Atheists, not all mind you, but most that I have talked to. It is a curiosity to me why someone that considers himself to be so grounded in science, would find pleasure in a world that is unlike anything real-world. It would make more sense that someone devoutly religious would gain more pleasure from the imaginary world of D&D than someone who bases their beliefs on the very opposite.

However, I must point out, in the 1980's TSR, the manufacturer of D&D at the time, came under fire by Christian organizations for its use of Satanism, witchcraft, suicide, pornography, and murder. As a kid playing the game, I must admit there is some violence in the game, but I challenge you to find too many games that are completely free of violence, at least the fun ones. I don't ever recall an occasion where Satanism was ever discussed, in reality or in the fictional world we would play in, in fact, I imagine, had just such a topic arisen, I likely would have objected to it purely on the basis that Satan is as real to me as God, and by this I mean the judeo christian version people belief in and not some fictional God in the game.

Since I believe in neither, and neither have anything to do with the game in which we are playing, it would seem to me such a topic would just be out of place. Now you could make the argument that none of the content of D&D exists in the real world, and you'd be right, after all Dragons aren't likely to be flying around anytime soon. The difference is that no one, with the exception of the very crazy, believe Dragons might be flying around amongst us, though many people believe in both Satan and God, without any evidence as to their existence.

As to matters of witchcraft, suicide, pornography and murder, all I can say is, witchcraft is only a part of the game as much as prayer to a fictional God is, they both happen in the game but neither is a central theme, or even a matter of importance to most. Those who find themselves committing suicide in the game, will likely find the rest of their time quite a boring one, watching others play, while you twiddle your thumbs, all in the hopes the Dungeon Master(DM) might see fit to resurrect your character in whatever comical way he or she sees fit. D&D and pornography is actually quite a laughable concept to me.

Though I imagine, that amongst very adult games with no children involved, this seems quite possible, we must consider that even in the real world there is sex. However, when I was a teenager the thought of mixing sex and games together was not even in the equation. Thinking back, I can't recall a single game where this happened, though now these days, it is arguably more common place. Lastly...murder. Yes, I confess I was responsible for many the death of orcs and bandits while playing D&D.

I find it odd that Christian organizations would protest the fictional murder of imaginary evil creatures, but say nothing of the very real world murder of millions of people all over the world every year. To me it is a travesty that children are murdered every day throughout the world and the only people seemed concerned are those related to the victims.

To me taking the life of anyone, is abhorrent, yet astonishingly most Christians find satisfaction in the death penalty. So, Christians seem more concerned with the fake deaths of millions of orcs that die each year in the world of D&D, than the sanctioned revenge-based executions of real-life human beings at the hands of the government. In even more ridiculousness, Christians seem overly zealous in their need to protect the unborn fetuses who's existence has not yet even been determined. Merely a few cells in a womb, comparable at worst to a flake of skin on the end of your elbow or at best the complexity of a frog.

This is more highly regarded than the life of a fully developed, living, breathing, human being who's life although maybe tragic, is filled with a vast wealth of experiences and knowledge that in comparison to the experience and knowledge of an unborn fetus, is clearly more valuable. But this is a topic I will further discuss later in the article.

In 1993, a professor at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington by the name of Richard Garfield approached the CEO of a small gaming company out of Washington by the name of Wizards of the Coast. Garfield had been working on the game since his days as a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania. He had actually developed quite a few games, his first at age 13, but it was RoboRally a game he developed in 1985, along with Magic: the Gathering(MTG), that he was interested in publishing. Then CEO, Peter Adkinson, seemed more interested in MTG, than RoboRally, and on August, 5th 1993, MTG was made a general release to the public.

Although the game is far more complex a subject than I want to dedicate my time to talking about, I can give you a general synopsis of the rules and how a game is played. Typically, two players sit facing opposite each other. They each have a deck comprised of a minimum of forty cards. These cards are comprised of different aspects of the game. Some cards are lands, some are creatures, and some are purely spells. Players draw seven cards and take turns, drawing a card, and each placing a land from their hand on the table in front of them if they have one. Lands can be tapped (turned on their side) for mana.

Mana is the fuel that allows a player to put additional cards from his hand into play. There are five basic land types, each providing a different color of mana. Swamps produce black, mountains produce red, plains produce white, forests produce green, and islands produce blue. Each creature or spell has a cost associated with it, that determines how much mana is required to put it into play. Players tap their lands, giving them mana, and put a creature or spell into play. Creatures can be used to attack the opposite player. Some creatures have special abilities a player can use to gain an advantage in the game.

Spells can either be permanent, meaning they stay on the field of play, or they can only last until the end of the turn. Every spell has some special effect on the game, usually something that is advantageous to the player playing it. Players start with a life total of twenty. Each point of damage they suffer either by a creature, or spell results in a loss of one of their total life points. When any player reaches a life total of zero, they lose the game. Although this basically describes the game, it truly does no justice to it. The nuances of the game cannot be easily described. Simply put, MTG still holds out 19 years later as one of the best strategic games ever created. It has a massive following world-wide. Players from all over the world take part in tournaments, the larger ones for cash prizes.

Though D&D and MTG are very different games, they both seem to revolve around the same lore, which is easily comparable to the world created by J.R.R. Tolkien in the Lord of the Rings. Garfield admitted that he was highly influenced by D&D while creating MTG, and Gary Gygax, creator of D&D, stating he had not considered Lord of the Rings as a source of his material, it must be noted that several parts of D&D had to be altered to comply with copyright laws, because creature types and names had been directly taken from Lord of the Rings. So it is easy to see why I was so easily taken by MTG, having been such a fan of D&D.

For many years I collected the game, played it with a ruthless fervor, and allowed it to influence my tastes in other types of media, in particular movies and video games. For years I competed regularly, winning many tournaments and rising in the ranks amongst my peers. Over the years I have taken many breaks from the game, having been disenfranchised with some of the decisions made over the years. With the success of MTG, Wizards of the Coast became synonymous with household gaming as Hasbro, Atari, Nintendo, Milton Bradley, or Parker Brothers.

So it was no surprise to anyone when Hasbro purchased Wizards of the Coast. What did come as a surprise to gamers however, was one of the first things that Hasbro did was turn what had been a primarily teenager to adult game, because of its themes, into a game marketed toward younger children. And of greater astonishment was the callousness with which they arbitrarily changed the rules of the game.

The game had always been a game that involved a gambling aspect, before players actually drew their opening hands, they would ante the top card of their library as part of the stakes of playing the game. So each player had a reason to win the game, and play with a real competitive nature. After all, if you were truly unlucky you could end up with your Black Lotus as ante. Included in the game were devilishly delightful ante cards that altered the state of the game when you played them. Some allowed you to ante additional cards in exchange for an advantage, others allowed you to alter the card being anted in exchange for some disadvantage.

Because of the nature of the game, altering one's ante was considered an act of evil and as such most ante cards were black. Since I haven't mentioned it before, I'll do it now. The colors in the game represent the different characteristics of gameplay in the fictional world.

White is the color of order, righteousness, healing and law. Blue is the color of illusion, intellect and trickery. Black is the color of power, greed, ambition, and death. Red is the color of chaos, fury, and war. Green is the color of life, nature, evolution, and instinct.

Once Hasbro took over, cards that depicted demonic-like figures were phased out of the game, the act of gambling was phased out of the game, and cards that featured text that made any reference to anything that could be considered controversial, were also removed. It was, as I referred to it, the Pussification of Wizards of the Coast. It took many years before Hasbro allowed a demonic-like figure, or even the word demon to appear on a card. Ante cards have never remade an appearance. I still play the game at times, but I have retired from competitive play for now.

One thing that I can say was that when we played the game, we never considered that we were playing with demons or devils or anything religious, to us they were just cards and idea that a picture of a demon or the word demon should rise to the level of a ban, especially in the light of the game becoming more compliant with a younger audience, seems ridiculous. After all, how many millions of children attend a church each week, sit in their seats, and listen to a preacher talk about the devil and demons and some pretty disturbing things. And here is the best part of it, NO ONE can claim that MTG depicts anything but pure fiction.

No reasonable person would believe that the cards are meant to be anything but the work of pure fantasy, however the religious people who visit church each week, read their bibles and preach their religion believe all of it. That means in their eyes the bible that they read to their children is real, contains real stories and events and depicts tremendous acts of cruelty and evil at the hands of not only men, but God himself, the Devil, angels and demons.

I'll take it a step further and say any parent who would allow their child to watch horrific movies depicting violence, death and evil acts, speak with hateful, bigoted and incendiary words, or deliberately choose ignorance over knowledge is a bad and possibly abusive parent, certainly one that shows delinquent behavior. Most people, and I'm guessing a lot of religious ones, would agree with that statement, however the Bible depicts all of these things. The bible is filled with violence, death and evil:

And Cain talked with Abel his brother: and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him. - Genesis 4:8

And the LORD plagued Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai Abram's wife. - Genesis 12:17

And they journeyed: and the terror of God was upon the cities that were round about them, and they did not pursue after the sons of Jacob. - Genesis 35:5

And I say unto thee, Let my son go, that he may serve me: and if thou refuse to let him go, behold, I will slay thy son, even thy firstborn. - Exodus 4:23

And my wrath shall wax hot, and I will kill you with the sword; and your wives shall be widows, and your children fatherless. -Exodus 22:24

Leviticus alone is filled with passages over and over again, depicting ritualistic animal sacrifice. Obviously there are tons of passages I could have added here but frankly I didn't have to go through very much of the Bible to actually find these. The Bible contains countless references to hate speech:

If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them. - Leviticus 20:13

Pour out thy wrath upon the heathen that have not known thee, and upon the kingdoms that have not called upon thy name. - Psalm 79:6

Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? - 2 Corinthians 6:14

For ye, brethren, became followers of the churches of God which in Judaea are in Christ Jesus: for ye also have suffered like things of your own countrymen, even as they have of the Jews.  Who both killed the Lord Jesus, and their own prophets, and have persecuted us; and they please not God, and are contrary to all men  - 1 Thessalonians 2:14-15

I know thy works, and tribulation, and poverty, (but thou art rich) and I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews, and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan. - Revelation 2:9

Many people will contend that the Hebrew text, that is the old testament is a depiction of God before the birth of Christ, and that many of these things are gone with the birth of Christ, and the introduction of the New Testament. I would like to point out that the last line there was a quote directly from Revelation as one coming from the mouth of Jesus Christ himself. In that one line, Jesus calls the Jews lying Satan worshipers. I should also point out this isn't the only passage in the bible where Jesus Christ speaks with such words. And as to the contention that the Bible is filled with ignorance just read these five passages:


Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch. And this is the fashion which thou shalt make it of: The length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits. - Genesis 6:14-15

But all other flying creeping things, which have four feet, shall be an abomination unto you. -Leviticus 11:23

Then the earth shook and trembled; the foundations also of the hills moved and were shaken, because he was wroth. - Psalm 18:7

And after these things I saw four angels standing on the four corners of the earth, holding the four winds of the earth, that the wind should not blow on the earth, nor on the sea, nor on any tree. - Revelation 7:1

And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit. - Revelation 9:1

In the first passage, Noah is tasked with making an ark that is 450 feet long, that will be able to hold two of each species of animal from all over the world. Maybe it works like Santa's toy sack, but I don't know. In the next passage God declares that all insects are an abomination, the only problem is that insects have six appendages not four, and God should know that if he created them.

And since we are on the subject why would God create anything, only to declare it an abomination later? Since he is God, would he not have known this before creating it, and thus not create it instead? In the third passage, and it is said in many many passages after, whenever God is angered earthquakes are created. By this rationale, God must be very angry at the people who live in California and Japan.

In the next passage the Earth is referred to as having four corners, depicting a flat Earth. Something that was believed to be true for a long time, until a man by the name of Christopher Columbus set sail toward the horizon and discovered the Earth was actually round. The flat Earth reference is made more than a few times throughout the Bible.

And in the final passage I have listed, an angel spots a Star falling to the Earth. As large as the Earth may seem, it pales in comparison to the stars, not to mention a star moving toward the Earth, would not fall so much as use its gravity to pull the Earth into its Corona, destroying it. Now I have left two important passages out which I chose to rather talk a little bit about instead, because these two things in the Bible cause the biggest controversy amongst people, In the beginning... and the virgin birth.

According to the Genesis creation account, God created the Earth, than he created the light and the stars. Then he created birds and whales, and then he created reptiles and insects. These events are in direct contradiction to science. We know that first came the Universe, then the Galaxies of Stars, then the systems of planets. Once the Earth formed, a long process of Evolution took place creating many things before insects and reptiles, and certainly the birds and whales. Birds are descendants of the reptiles, and whales are mammals which didn't form until much much later.

If you take Genesis as a factual account you are left with some odd problems, for instance, God makes light, which he turns into day, and darkness, which he turns into night on the first day. The problem is that God then waits until the fourth day to make the stars, which are needed to produce the light he creates on the first day. God also blunders by making plants on the third day, when they won't actually thrive, because the photosynthesis that plants all need to survive won't come until the fourth day when he creates the sun and stars.

The virgin birth is a problematic concept, the idea being that fertilization of an egg is possible with only one parent. In asexual reproduction such a thing would be possible, however humans do not reproduce this way, sexual reproduction requires that a male be present to fertilize the egg the female produces. Thus it makes the entire sequence of events impossible. Now Christians contend that God miraculously made Mary pregnant.

Miracles are a great thing because they are capable of flying in the face of a millions years of evolution and scientific progress and understanding. So let's say for the sake of argument God is invisible, this would allow him to move sight unseen into Mary's bedroom. See even if God could do this, he would still need biology, because we are biological creatures, subject to the laws of biology and evolution. What's the point of creating the universe, populating it with all these laws, and not following them. It seems more likely that such a being would also be subject to such laws, at least while within this universe that has them.

That means sperm is needed to fertilize the egg, so the invisible God would have to, without being felt, we'll assume she was asleep, insert his miraculous penis into her vagina, without tearing her hymen of course, after all she is still a virgin when Jesus is born, and inject his miracle sperm into her. Hmm, by any account if that story was told to someone and you didn't use the words God or Invisible, he would be a rapist and Mary would be his victim. After all, she refutes having had intercourse, though she is married to Joseph, and is suddenly pregnant, and oh yeah God is the father, but she doesn't remember it.

So either God is seriously light on his feet and Mary has a sleep disorder, or he used a magic pill and roofied her. Or Joseph impregnates his wife, Mary is not a virgin, and Jesus is not the son of God. There is a principle of science referred to as Occam's razor. It basically states whenever faced in any given situation with the possibility of multiple explanations, choosing the simplest explanation over the more complex one tends to be the right one.

In part three I will continue to look at the events that shape our lives, and some of the ones that shaped mine, as well as further continue my descent into religion.

UPDATE: You can find part three here

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Why I am an Atheist

In this article I will attempt to explain all the things that resulted in my opinion of religion, as well as try to defend my view as best as I can with hopefully well thought out arguments. First I want to say, that although I detest religion as it stands, it is a blight on what would otherwise be something special, I believe that as long as I argue for freedom, granting everyone the same rights, as a matter of law, and more so a matter of human decency, people should have the right to observe any religion they choose to, as long as that religion is not harmful.

For instance, if your religious beliefs dictate that once a day you pray to a toaster and eat ice cream while dancing, apart from the possible implications of eating ice cream every day, which include gaining weight, increasing your in-take of fat which could result in premature heart disease and maybe worse, after time a disapproval for ice cream altogether, I have no problem with it. Eat as much ice cream as you like, dance the night away, and pray to the shiniest toaster you can find. However, the second you criticize someone else, cause harm to someone else, or try to coerce someone else, all in the name of your religion, we have a problem.

Part I: Childhood, and the deranged

When I was a younger child, I knew nothing of the world, except the one that was presented to me everyday in school, or at home, in front of the television or through the interactions of my family. I have three brothers, but for most of my youth, I lived with two at first, and then one. I lived in a two family house, my parents, and brothers on the top floor, and my grandparents living on the bottom floor. For me this was a perfect situation, if I were unable to get something out of my parents, my grandparents were no further than a few feet away, down the stairs. My grandmother was to me, a very nice woman, at times, loud and seemingly crazy, but always loving and mostly well-meaning. My grandfather was a man who had been through wars, he had been a medic in the army and had seen his fair share of bloodshed.

As a child I was never told of the lives my grandparents had lived before I knew them, other than the occasional story of war, my grandfather would tell, in retrospect a gift, from a man who lived a life, no one should ever have to live. Even now thinking about the man brings tears to my eyes, knowing I never got to tell him the profound influence he had on my life. He has been dead now for many years, and I am sad to say, I don't think enough about him, probably because it saddens me so. Even now I struggle to think about what I really know about my grandparents, and I confess, not so much. These were the parents of my mother, unfortunately, my father's parents did not live long enough to be a part of my life.

I say unfortunately, because a part of me misses something I will never have. Having never met my father's parents I really know nothing about them, other than a few stories my father has told me, none of which should be repeated to any child. My father's father or step-father, not really sure, committed suicide in front of his children, something that would scar the memory of my father his whole life I am sure. And my father's mother would die in her bed, in severe pain, from an unknown cause, not because nothing could be done, but because another husband of hers would make the choice to not take her to the hospital for the care she so urgently needed. So my father had to witness the suicide of one parent and the slow, arbitrary death of another.

My grandmother was as I remember it a catholic, but not so much a practicing one. For one, she never left the house. She suffered many ailments, including trouble with walking and some agoraphobic tendencies. However, in conversations I've had with family members, she wasn't always like that, so I can only deduce this happened later in life, obviously either before I was born, or before I had the ability to understand it. She spoke to me on occasion about the nuns at the local church, and talked about how she liked going to church, as I remember it. I imagine, suffering as she did with her ailments, she also suffered in someway, not being able to pray in the church as she once did.

She never complained about it to me, in fact as much as I really try to remember it, I cannot ever remember a time she preached anything religious to me, other than the standard idioms. I can recall a few times hearing something along the lines as, God is always watching. I can most definitely recall seeing bibles located in random places throughout the house, however, as much as I try, I am unable to remember a time when either of my grandparents actually picked one up and read from it. I loved my grandmother, after all she was the only one I had, but more than that she loved me with all the love a parent or grandparent could love a child. I can't speak for my other siblings on the subject. I know that at times she could be a stern woman, and on occasion I remember suffering at the hands of a particular cane she had, it bore emblems that left an impression in skin, that didn't easily heal. I know that each of us certainly received punishment at times, that most people would deem today as child abuse by most standards.

However, I must point out that although my grandmother was easily unnerved, occasionally tapping us on the ankles with her rake for rocking back and forth with no rhyme or reason while speaking to her, we were not the nicest children to have ever been born. Admittedly, I spent a lot of my youth doing relatively dumb things, all with no logical reason. On several occasions, I risked life or limb, jumping from a height that no one would think of jumping from, or riding my bike down a hill with no brakes, or playing ball in the street with frequent traffic. I'm not even mentioning all the terrible things that occurred in my house as a direct result of what can only be described as blissful ignorance. My grandmother would almost always find out, and though she would definitely yell at you, a whack from the cane was only reserved for the dumbest shit.

My grandfather was a peaceful man, at least that was how I remember it. That isn't to say he was somehow a pacifist. Just thinking of the idea, gives me giggles. Generally, the guy really didn't get angry much, other than the few times he would mutter something out like, GODDAMNIT! In fact, trying to recall, I am unable to think of many other things he said that came with such fervor. He wasn't really a man of many words, except when talking about the war, otherwise he kept, kind of to himself. Although the man never received any awards for inventing something, writing some amazing theory, or teaching a class on quantum mechanics, as I remember it, he was a brilliant man. In all the time I knew him, I can't ever remember a time when I didn't want to listen to something he had to say to me.

As far as I remember it, the man practically knew everything. Whenever I needed something answered, I knew I could ask him and he would have the answer. Now my grandfather wasn't a doctor, or an astrophysicist, or a botanist, and I imagine if I had asked him something about plants or worm holes, he might not have had the right answer, but he would have faked it enough to make me believe it. What the man did know, was the human body. He had been a medic in the Korean war, and he could tell you anything you wanted to know about the human body. I remember studying something about the body in school and running home and telling him, and he always had something interesting to say on the subject. Of course, along with his extensive knowledge on the human body, he also possessed, as he said the ability to kill someone without resistance. He would show us children the ways a person could take another person down, and if they chose to, kill that person without them being able to stop them.

To most people reading this, you may be horrified at the prospect of any man teaching a small child how to take another person down and kill them. In his defense, his lessons always came with some kind of warning or moral story. It was his opinion that killing a man should only ever be done as a last resort, and only if you are left with no other choice. I have to confess, I know several ways to kill someone in a matter of seconds, but have never had an occasion or want to ever do it. I have some memory of asking my grandfather if he had ever killed a man, and to the best of my knowledge, a simple reply of yes, was received. Although I cannot truly be sure, I don't ever remember him going into gory detail of him committing the act, though he frequently spoke about how he and the other medics all had a price on their heads and how he had seen plenty of death in the hospitals.

When I was a child, my parents both attended church and forced their children to attend church with them. I remember wanting to do something with my Sundays other than going to church, but that was simply not an option, at least when I was younger. I know my dad believes in GOD, as I have asked him about it before, to which he seems wish-washy on the subject. He suffers from Multiple Sclerosis (MS), as he did when I was a kid, but in his later years, it has progressed to a worsening state. I tend not to bother him with things like this anymore, as his memory isn't the best, his brain having been ravaged by the disease over the years. He used to say that “Everything is a big mystery, but we couldn't have just come from nothing,” a standard religious argument, but one I will attempt to put to rest, further in this article.

Growing up with my dad was...a challenge. He was diagnosed with MS in 1979, two years after I was born, so I have no memory of the man without the disease. If I believe my mother, and I have no reason not to, the man was a wonderful, and loving man before he began to suffer from MS. Unfortunately, the only memories I have of my father were not of this wonderful, loving man as my mother would describe. Now whether this is a matter of disease, or a matter of his inability to deal with children, I can't say. I can only attest to what I experienced and it was most of the time, unpleasant. Although my brain is littered with memories that should haunt any child, I also have memories of good times with the man.

He loved fishing and candlepin bowling. When I try to think about all the hobbies the man might have had when I was a kid, I can't recall him doing much more than that. He would take us kids fishing with him, many times he went, and we would go bowling with him on his league nights and hang around the bowling alley playing with the other kids who's parents were also in leagues. He worked in a paper mill, as a boiler operator. His job was very demanding, having visited the environment in which he worked on occasion, I can say with absolute certainty, if I had to do that job I might go crazy. It wasn't a particularly difficult job, in fact I imagine it had some downtime, but when the shit hit the fan, it really hit the fan. It was also well above 100 degrees Fahrenheit in there, all the time. If I had to guess how hot it was in that boiler room, I would say it was close to 125 degrees Fahrenheit. It was dark, dirty, and looked like something right out of a horror movie. In fact, the first time I saw A Nightmare on Elm Street, the boiler room where Freddy resides, reminded me exactly of the boiler room my father worked in.

He would come home from what most certainly qualifies as a shitty job, already stressed, and have to deal with screaming children. Now again, MS most certainly affects the brain physically, so with all the evidence I have now, I know if not the root cause of his anger, it was most definitely a contributing factor. I could spend hours talking about how often my brothers and I were abused as children, but I feel it really defamatory and unnecessary overall, and as such will only describe a few situations as I believe events like these helped shape me into what I am.

I can recall one birthday when I was a kid, my father had taken me to the local pharmacy to get some candy, you see today was my birthday. So we walked up the block to the corner store, he bought for me some chocolate and we walked back. In secret, my mother had planned a party for me and invited some kids over. Everyone was hiding in the kitchen, unknown at the time to me. We entered the house and climbed the stairs and made our way down the hall toward the kitchen. Suddenly, Surprise! I stood in absolute shock, my parents were never one for parties so this was completely unbelievable. I sat there and opened my gifts, one of which was a brand new hockey stick, it was a wooden stick with a green blade at the end. So after opening my gifts I ate some cake and all seemed well.

Now I can't exactly recall what set the man off, in the moment one does not unnecessarily try to record the events in their head for later playback, when one is running for their life. I remember running down the hall and having the man chase me, brand new hockey stick in hand. My only advantage as a kid was speed, and I used it well, by the time he had reached the top of the stairs looking down, I was at the bottom, looking up. Without a second thought the man through the hockey stick like a spear, aiming straight at my head. If not for what I can only conclude to be, child-like reflexes, I spun around twisted my head out of the way just in time as the hockey stick smacked the light switch on the wall, breaking it off, leaving a hole in the faceplate where the switch was once located. Had that stick hit me in the head, I have no doubt it would have likely killed me, or at least left me with a major injury, such as a loss of an eye or brain damage. This was a man who only an hour ago, walked me up to the corner pharmacy and bought me a chocolate bar, took my hand and walked me back home.

On another occasion, my younger brother and I who lived in the same room for a few years, were resting in our beds, but not asleep. As with most children, sleeping is the last thing you want to do at the end of the day, for most children sleeping only comes when you have exhausted yourself and your body forces it to happen. So as we did on some nights we spoke to each other from our beds. My brother and I had bunk beds, he was on top and I was on the bottom. Though this sometimes switched, depending on whoever wanted which bed that night. As conversations between young children go, If I had to listen to what we were talking about now, I'd fall asleep myself. “Who would win in a fight between Lady Jaye and Destro? The Voltron lion with the girl sucks, but the black lion is awesome. Optimus Prime could totally kick Megatron's ass.” Just a lot of childish nonsense.

On this night, like every night we weren't particularly loud, as a matter of fact our room was clear across the house from the living room where my father was located, but to be on the safe side, we kept our tone at a relatively low level. “I can fucking hear you kids in there, you better shut the fuck up or I'm going to come in there and give you something to cry about,” we heard from across the house. Ok, let me first point out this is a big house, not a small house, not only that but the man often professed an inability to hear even the loudest things spoken clearly within earshot. How he was able to hear us this night is still quite a mystery. So shaking off the warning, as kids do, we continued to talk but now at an even lower tone, figuring no one outside this room could hear us. Just to be on the safe side though, as on other previous occasions we had actually brought several large books with us this night, although not to read. Taking the books, we packed them down the legs of our sleepy pants, and padded our butts with them.

My father had a few spots he would use in particular over others, so we could be reasonably sure where we wanted to protect ourselves. So having secured the books in our pants, we continued talking, again much lower than previously. Suddenly, pounding footsteps could be heard coming down the hallway toward our room. The floor was a wood floor and made a sound like the clogging sound of hooves from a horse as he approached. The sounds grew louder, the closer he approached until finally he arrived in our room. Without a word, he grabbed my brother on the top bunk and started wailing into him with his fist. Repeatedly, he continued. My father was violent for sure, but in a weird way, either because he didn't like to hear his children cry from being beaten or because, and more scary, he found satisfaction in it, he stopped once he elicited tears.

So through repeated exposure to being beaten, you develop a sense of when you can start crying and he would stop. So once my brother started crying, he immediately turned his rage on me, grabbing me by the shirt and pounding into me with his fist, hitting my leg and ass repeatedly, until I started crying. Of course, I was only fake crying, after all the books had done what they were there to do, protect me from injury. He stormed off, saying nothing, presumably going back to watching the television on the other side of the house in the living room. Once I had assessed the situation and determined I was no longer in danger, my cries turned to laughter, having just endured a thrashing and suffering no ill effects from it. But my brother was still crying, so I leaned out of the bunk and spoke, “Why are you still fake crying, he's gone?” To which I received the reply, “I'm not fake crying, one of the books slipped.”

On another occasion, my brother and I had been sitting in our room playing with our G.I. Joes on the bottom bunk. As we got a little older, we got a little smarter and the floor of our room could only be described as looking somewhat like the surface of the moon. After years of abuse, we had learned a few things about my father, for one he couldn't really chase you anymore, he had started walking around with a cane, and so if you could outrun him, you had a really good chance of getting away. Another thing we had learned was that his legs were prone to giving out on the man at times, and as such he wouldn't chance walking into a situation where he knew he might fall. This of course opened a perfect opportunity for us, and as most kids with a ton of toys do, we littered the room with them. I swear, it was impossible to find any place in that room, where you were able to identify the green carpet underneath.

So of course once we had the room configured in a way that gave us some protection from ground attack, it only made sense we needed some protection from an air assault as well. My mother loved quilts, I mean holyshit the woman had forty of them, maybe more. So I had this idea, of course at the time I had no clue if it would work, but I theorized that with enough layers of protection we could stop anything. You need to understand this was way before I knew anything of Kevlar, and certainly I had never heard of or knew anything of a bullet proof vest, as far as I remember it. So I had this idea, in hindsight, it was not only genius but as it turns out life saving. We gathered up some quilts, I don't know the exact amount, I doubt we counted, but I know it was a lot. My brother and I took the first quilt and tucked it underneath the mattress of the top bunk, and draped it down over the bottom bunk.

This made it impossible to see what was going under in the bottom bunk. We then took another quilt and repeated the process. We continued until we had used all the quilts and had created this massive draping wall of quilts that hung from the top bunk over the bottom and blocked all activity below from sight. Now we used this for days, playing G.I. Joes and transformers and anything else we wanted to play, all in the privacy under what I had dubbed, “The Great Blanket Barricade.” My father really didn't like the idea of privacy I imagine, after all, the door to the room had been taken off only months earlier and to my recollection the only rooms in the house with doors were my parent's bedroom and bathroom.

So hearing us playing with our toys on the bottom bunk, unable to see what was actually going on, I can only guess we were up to no good in my father's mind. In fact, I didn't start drinking alcohol or smoking marijuana until l was a little older, so whatever he imagined was going on, reality was much simpler. He approached the edge of the room, standing in the doorway and yelling at us from the hall. Under all those quilts his words seemed muffled, or it might have just been my ability to ignore a rant when I heard one. My brother lifted the blanket up and we looked out toward the doorway.

My father was standing there looking menacing as he often did, pointing his finger and yelling at us about hiding under the blankets. Ignoring him, I could see in his eyes rage was beginning to build. He surveyed the room, looking at the crap scattered all over the floor. In a second, he had his shoe removed from his foot and he aimed it toward us. Quickly we hid beneath the barricade, waiting to see if it would work. We heard a tap as the shoe hit the barricade and lightly fell to the floor. It had worked! So I lifted the quilts up to see his reaction, and I could immediately see some scheming in those eyes. He looked all over the room but soon his eyes settle on a spot merely a few feet from him.

In hindsight, it may not have been the best idea to leave this object where it was. When my older brother's were kids they played with these very large metal Tonka trucks. I am not sure if they were actually bought for one of my older brothers but they played with them nonetheless. So when my younger brother and I were kids we also played with these very large metal Tonka trucks. There was a crane and a dump truck if memory serves. Now understand, they do not make these anymore, the ones you find today are made entirely out of plastic, I'm guessing for good reason. Not too many parents today let their children play with the kinds of toys we played with when we were kids, a couple of them come to mind, lawn darts for one and these Tonka trucks are another. So seeing one of these Tonka trucks before him, the dump truck, in particular. My father, without really thinking, I can only guess, picks this beast up and hurls it right at us.

Fortunately for us, those child-like reflexes being what they were, we were under that barricade in under a second flat, with time to spare. We had no idea what was going to happen, after all in my preparations I didn't actual calculate the amount of stress each quilt could take and multiply that by the number of quilts being used, being able to determine how much could actually be tossed at the thing. Not to mention it would never have even occurred to me to test a Tonka truck that had to weigh twenty-five or more pounds being thrown at it. Suddenly, it hits the barricade, a shock wave is felt as the impact of the toy hits the barricade sending its force into it. We see it move slightly on the inside, but no more than a few inches. “HOLYSHIT!” my brother declares, “It worked!” Needless to say, we stayed in our room for many hours that day.

The one thing I can tell you about that is that my dad has a cooling off period in which he would generally wind down after he enraged for a while. Once this happened, you could approach him and he was fine, he might make a remark but he wouldn't hit you. Now again, I must stress, if any such object of that weight were flung at a child, it would likely do a tremendous amount of damage, including possibly kill the child. The only conclusion I can draw from these events is that my father had no plan, did not think and only acted on instinct alone. Of course, I wonder where anyone gets the instinct to hurt a child from, but that's a matter for a later discussion.

My mother is a good person. When we were growing up my brothers and I were terrible at times, and often made my mother cry. If it weren't breaking something she loved, it was getting in fights, or doing death-defying stupid acts. My mother is by no means a saint, but how many of us are? The only thing I can say about my mother with respect to her disciplining techniques was that she enjoyed certain tools. Although my father enjoyed throwing objects and using his fists, my mother would use small hand tools as weapons of discipline. For instance, on many occasions the weapon of choice was a plastic spatula which left a red spot and bar like pattern where it landed.

She also often fancied the use of yard sticks, or what she called switches, which were branches you would have to go outside, break off a bush or tree and bring back to her for use on yourself. However, the most evil of all the weapons, in my opinion, were the claws she bore. Growing up my mother had these finger nails that rivaled Freddy Kreuger's. If she got a hold of you, she would dig into your skin with them and yank you away for punishment, which could be anything from being sent to your room to getting a whack with the spatula. Obviously, she didn't see the nails in the skin as a punishment all on its own.

The biggest difference between the way my mother disciplined her children and the way my father disciplined his children, was night and day. After all, as horrible as getting claws to the back of the arm was, it paled to having a Tonka truck whipped at your head. It would have never occurred to my mother to seek out an object that could kill one of her children. My father however, anything was fair game in his book. Hiding things you didn't want tossed at you began kind of a game with us kids. If you knew it could be used, getting rid of the weapon that could be your death, was considered a good idea.

Now at about this time, I am starting to get more interested in science, I had a third grade teacher by the name of Mr. Jebaca. Now I'm absolutely sure, I'm killing his name, but us kids just called him Mr. Chewbacca, like the wookiee. I remember his teaching style, it was certainly an interesting one. He would have you come to the chalk board to solve a math problem. After writing down the answer, he would give you this look of disappointment, and ask, “Are you sure that is correct?” And you'd start thinking about it, and he would poll the class and no one would answer. “I think you need to take another look,” he would say. Maybe I was wrong? After all he's the teacher, so I would look at it again and say, “No, I'm pretty sure this is right.” “Good,” he would say. And that's how every lesson was, you had no idea if you were right or wrong. He made you consider the possibility each time you answered.

It was in his class that I first discovered I had a love for science. He did a lot of experiments in that class, with all kinds of things. And after we were finished he would explain the science of all of it. He would say that science was a search for truth through experimentation and observation. “You should never just assume something because it is what you have been told,” he would say. In that class I would begin to learn that there was more to life than just what I knew. I began to study a lot on the Sun and the planets in our solar system, and my mother would buy me books on the subject. It was then I would begin to question some of the things I had been told about the earth.

After all, if dinosaurs existed millions of years ago, all died off and left us evidence to study, why wasn't that ever mentioned in the bible? Surely, while God was working on Genesis, he could have found time to mention the dinosaurs. It occurred to me, the tyrannosaurus rex was quite large and he was a meat eater, so wouldn't have Adam and Eve have met their demise at the hands of just such a large creature. So, with information I had read and learned in school, I came to Sunday School with questions ready.

And I asked my questions, and although the Sunday School teacher tried her best to answer them, the answers were less than satisfying. Insisting that Adam and Eve were the first humans but they coexisted with all the other animals in peace. “Now wait just a minute,” I said. “Dinosaurs are large, and they eat meat and Adam and Eve would be...Meat. The dinosaurs have to eat something, they can't just coexist in peace with all the other animals they will starve and die.” She didn't like what I had to say. I then said, “What about Noah's Ark? How is it possible that Noah really got all those animals on a single boat. I mean, wouldn't those animals try to eat each other? A lion couldn't very well exist on the same boat as a zebra? And even if you managed to have a cage for each set of animals what would the lions eat? You would have to feed them an animal. And if you did that than, you wouldn't have any more of those animals.” I don't remember how long I was allowed to remain in Sunday School but I clearly remember that at some point, I didn't have to do it anymore.

In part two I will explore more of some of the events I remember that may have led to me becoming an atheist, as well as discuss some of the issues I have with religion.

UPDATE: You can find part two here

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Constitutional Erosion: Supreme Court rules, strip-search legal for any crime

If you have been reading my blog, you know I like to follow the US Supreme Court rulings very closely. While the highest court in our land is supposed to be the epitome of fairness and justice, never failing to uphold the constitution, this court seems more concerned with politics and partisanship than with the oath they swore to uphold.

"I, __ do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God."

When a Supreme Court Justice affirms this oath, they are swearing that they will put aside personal opinion, personal faith, and personal feelings, to only follow the letter of the law and defend the words of the Constitution of the United States of America. This isn't a joke, and it's not a game. This is the most powerful document this country has ever written, and it holds for all of us freedom and justice from tyranny. The justices of the supreme court are supposed to be the ultimate defenders of our liberties, protecting the rights of individuals, even when their decision to do so is an unpopular one. Being appointed to the Supreme Court is a lifetime appointment so popularity need not be a factor in making their decision, nor should political influence, religious zealotry, or personal bias.


Unfortunately for all of us, in recent times, republican presidents have appointed conservative justices to the court in an attempt to undo Roe v. Wade. While this hasn't yet been heard by this court, I believe it is only a matter of time.

On Monday the Supreme Court made a ruling that stuns common sense and further shows that partisanship in this country is a cancer that not only infects our Legislative Branch but our Judicial Branch as well. I will continue in a minute but first I want to tell you a story.

In 2005, Albert and April Florence were living in the state of New Jersey, they were paying their taxes and living the American dream. April pregnant at the time, wanted to visit her mother. The couple had recently bought a new house and wanted to celebrate their purchase with members of the family. So they got their four year old son loaded in a car seat in the back of the car, April got into the driver's seat and Albert got into the passenger seat and they set out on their trip. At a point during this trip the couple was pulled over by a New Jersey State trooper, which would normally not be a big deal but on this day it would turn out to be the worst day of Albert Florence's life. You see a few years before, Albert had been pulled over for a traffic violation. He was given a citation, which he promptly paid.

Unfortunately, New Jersey state records showed that the citation was never paid, a common occurrence in many states, and so a bench warrant was issued for Albert Florence to appear in court. Now Mr. Florence was aware of this, in fact, he went so far as to get a certified document issued to him from the New Jersey state department of motor vehicles, which shows he actually paid the fine, and it was signed and bore the seal of the state of New Jersey as proof of this. As I've said, this is a common occurrence, and these kinds of documents are often issued to individuals everyday in case they are pulled over. So when the trooper pulled the couple over, he took their licenses and went back to his vehicle. Returning a short time later he informed Albert that he had a warrant out for his arrest and that he had to take him into the police station. Albert promptly produced the certified document proving he had paid the fine, which should have allowed the couple to go on their way, however this police officer ignored the document and arrested Albert on the spot in front of his pregnant wife and four year old son.

Upon reaching the police station Albert Florence was strip-searched, a procedure no one should ever want to happen to them. Albert was asked to strip completely naked, handle his genitals, squat and cough for the officer's there. Once finished, he was placed into a jail cell. During his six day stay in jail for this traffic violation, he moved to another jail, where he was promptly made to strip once again, grab his genitals, squat and cough. The irony of the situation is under New Jersey state law, traffic violations are not an offense worthy enough of a jail sentence. So Mr. Florence spent six days in jail for something he didn't deserve to go to jail for and was subjected to a violation of his privacy for no reason, since the police had no belief Albert Florence proved a threat to anyone.

The point of a strip-search is to prevent known violent criminals from smuggling into prison, weapons or contraband. Albert Florence had committed no crime, and in no way could be considered a violent criminal threat. During the six days in jail, Albert was allowed no contact with his wife April, who had no idea if her husband was alive or dead. Having believed his constitutional right to privacy had been violated, Albert brought suit against the County of Burlington in the state of New Jersey. Albert believed that under the fourth amendment, the constitution protects individuals against acts of unreasonable search and seizure by the government. Albert had been wrongly arrested for a crime he had not committed, held against his will, and subjected to multiple intrusive strip-searches. More importantly, the police had no reason to suspect that Albert even carried any kind of contraband. This clearly, falls under the definition of a case of unreasonable search and seizure.

Before the court was a case where the police had performed what could easily be considered a case of unreasonable search and seizure by the government, a clear violation of the fourth amendment of the constitution of the US. The court heard both sides of the argument, including some stunning examples of abuse presented to them. A few of these examples were of people having been strip-searched for such things as driving with a noisy muffler, failing to use a turn signal and riding a bicycle without an audible bell. A nun was even strip-searched, after an arrest for trespassing during an antiwar demonstration.

This seemed to be an open and shut case, however, showing true partisanship as the court has recently done, in a 5-4 split, conservatives v. liberals, the Supreme Court ruled the search was legal.

In case after case before our courts, judges have always ruled that individual's rights must outweigh the rights of society even when doing so would put a criminal back on the streets, because justice must be blind. If someone has committed a crime but has had their rights violated judges have always ruled that a miscarriage of justice against one individual is a miscarriage of justice against us all. Upholding the constitution is more important than putting a criminal behind bars. This is an important tenet of the justice system, because it says that even if it resulted in a thousand criminals going to jail, if even one innocent person went to jail, justice would not be served. Equal justice under the law, protects criminals, but it also protects the innocent and should you find yourself faced with a crime you were innocent of committing you too would want a justice system that upheld these beliefs.

It used to be in this country that justice and liberty were something all of us, republican or democrat, conservative or liberal, rich or poor held sacred. However, we live in this new world, a world ruled not by the majority, but by a very select group of conservatives who's interests lie not with the general populous but a select group of rich corporations and individuals who have an agenda. Their agenda is to erode the rights of individuals to the point where the only persons who have them are the elite. In Washington, things like liberty and justice, are commodities bought and paid for by those who can afford them.

As this is supposed to be a pseudo technology blog, I was reminded of something this week, that I will talk about at some length, which has some relevance. When I was younger I played a popular game at the time called Counter-strike (CS). It is a game where there are two sides, the Counter-Terrorist team (CT) and the Terrorist team. The game would start with each team occupying a specific position on the map, and each team had a mission to complete. If you were on the CT side your objective mission was to kill all the terrorists, rescue the hostages, or prevent a bomb attack. If you were on the side of the Terrorists, your objective was the opposite, kill the CT unit, bomb the target and prevent the CT unit from rescuing the hostages at any cost. It was a fun game to play, as any First Person Shooter (FPS) usually is.

But like many FPS games, it too was plagued by a group of individuals who played the game for a different reason, not to have fun, but to win at any cost. These individuals would resort to the use of cheating technology to gain a competitive advantage in the game. Typically the cheats, refered to as hacks by the community, would be wall hacks that allowed someone to see an opponent no matter where they were on the map, or aimbots that allowed the individual to always hit a target in the head, resulting in an instant kill for them. I myself had experimented with using such technologies like many of us do with things like drugs and alcohol when we are younger. It's no different, and while it was fun to kill someone without needing to use any skill, it got lame pretty fast and I quit doing it, in fact I became a sort of force against it. I spent a lot of time dedicated to trying to stop these kinds of cheats, advising people on how the technology worked and how it could be detected and prevented. At the time I was a member of a group of individual CS players, called a clan. The clan I was a member of was called Chronic 7, and we were a tight-knit community of guys and gals who loved playing the game, but most of all we all hated cheaters.

Over the years of playing with these guys I ascended in the ranks, making it to the top of the team, taking over the duties of programming the server content. Ever since I had been a kid, I was a decent programmer, spending most of my time working on utilities that solved problems I had with windows functions. When I finished with a utility I would release it free of charge to the public so that someone who had the same kind of problem could find a solution to it, like I had. It was a common belief of mine that problems in technology were just programming errors, and could be easily resolved by re-writing the program or circumventing the original intent, and alternatively inserting my own programming code. But more than anything open source, and free software, are philosophies I believed in then and still hold on to today. So at the time, a programmer who wanted to alter the game of CS to suit his or her needs, could do so through the use of Application Programming Interface (API) calls available through the Software Development Kit (SDK) provided by Valve, the company who developed CS. This technology allowed modifications (MODS) to be made to the game, that allowed a fully customized experience.

An example of this was actually CS itself, which didn't start out as a game, but rather a MOD of Half-Life, another game developed by Valve. CS was later purchased by Valve and turned into a fully functional game. So when games like CS became popular, some programmers took it upon themselves to create a technology called Admin-Mod which allowed anyone with competent programming skills the ability to create their own modifications of the game. Admin-mod and MODS like it work by accessing the MetaMod dynamic-link library (dll), which make direct calls to the Half-Life engine and allow multiple dlls direct access simultaneously in parallel. Having considered myself to be one of these competent programmers I took it upon myself to see if I could create some kind of useful utility for the game of CS, and I started out with something simple, a tool that could alter the physics of the game. I installed the plugin onto the CS server, and everyone loved it. Soon some of the clan leaders wanted to know how they could kick or ban people who were in violation of the rules. So I went to work and in a few hours had a nice little interface built to do just that. It was a success, and we had a lot of fun using it, removing rules violators at will without a second thought.

Like many servers out there, our server was plagued by cheaters, and a simply kicking them had no effect, as they would come right back, and banning them, while temporarily effective proved useless as these guys seemed to be able to bypass this either through the use of a utility or through the use of multiple login ids. The fight was proving to be a difficult one and certainly one we were losing. But being the ingenious individual I was, I considered an alternative that might prove to be more useful if it worked. I began work on a new plugin that could be more effective against a cheater than I had ever seen before. It took me a few days but when I was finished I had the first version of the Admin_Fuckoff plugin.

When you load the CS client to play the game, the executable looks for a configuration (config) file located in the same folder as the executable and if it exists, runs the commands contained within the config file. These commands represent all the settings your client uses to customize the game to your personal preference. For instance, the color of your crosshair, the speed of your internet connection, and the key bindings associated to the game with your keyboard.  This typically means, forward is equal to W, backward is equal to S and left and right are A and D respectively. These key bindings are fully customizable and each custom setting is stored in the config file. So Admin_Fuckoff did something that most of these plugins had not really done before, it altered the config file of the client. While a kick or ban had proven a fruitless maneuver, this proved to be quite effective.

Cheaters subjected to this found that when they attempted to fire their weapon, they died. This meant, no matter what hack you were using, you would never be granted an opportunity to kill anyone with it. The other admins loved this tool and used it frequently. Soon I was receiving requests from them to create more interesting methods for dealing with the cheaters, so I went back to work and wanted to do some more interesting things, but soon found Adminmod was entirely too limiting in what I actually needed to be done. It was at that time I started a quest to find something better and I found that with AMX. I installed AMX, re-wrote my plugin, changed its name to AMX_FUCKOFF and we were back in business with a new version of the plugin that featured the ability to reverse the user's controls. This meant someone trying to go forwards would go backwards instead, and viceversa.

As with any game, the company releases updates regularly and one of these updates caused AMX stop functioning. Unfortunately, at the time, the team in charge of the development of AMX did not update the MOD as often as CS was updated, which created a problem for us plugin programmers, and once again I went on a quest to find an alternative. I finally settled on a MOD called AMXMODX (AMXX), it was similar to AMX, meaning I didn't have to change the code of my plugin too much, but more importantly, it was being frequently updated and had been well supported. So again the server was modified to accommodate the change and we continued playing the game, screwing over cheaters whenever they were encountered. Over the next few months, I would alter the plugin extensively, first as a matter of need as the cheaters had figured out how to circumvent my plugin and second as a matter of principle.

The cheaters found that if they simply set their config file to read-only, it could no longer be altered and therefore they could continue to cheat unable to be punished. Little did they know, that contained within the CS API, was a little known command I found that allowed the read-only status of a config file to be ignored, and therefore be written to. This command was inserted into the API to allow programmers access to the developer code. Changing the developer status of the client meant that any arbitrary code could be executed on a client without the client's knowledge and consent, further more the change could be made permanent by altering the config file of the client even if the user had set the config file to a status of read-only, a change that would typically render a file unable to be altered by the operating system (OS) of the computer.

Making this change to my plugin meant any user connecting to the Chronic 7 Server could have their configuration arbitrarily changed as a matter of rule, stated clearly in the Message of The Day (MOTD) whenever a user connected. Adding the CENSURE command to the plugin allowed an admin dealing with a cheater the ability to completely and almost irreversibly alter the user's config file. The command once executed would unbind a client's controls completely, save the config file and then boot the user from the server making the change permanent. This was meant to be reserved only for the worst offenders. A user who found themselves the victim of this would be unable to play CS, often having to reinstall the game if they didn't know how to fix the problem. As I've said before, as a matter of principle my belief in open source and free software compelled me to release the plugin to the general public, and so I did by placing it on the Chronic 7 website at the time, in compiled form and in source code.

I had no idea what a mistake this would be, soon servers all over the internet had the plugin installed and user's everywhere were feeling the abuse. All over the AMXMODX forums, talk of the plugin began to spread and users were being banned for even mentioning it. You see the practice of altering a user's config file was called by the community SLOWHACKING and as news of this had spread, I began to receive emails from people, sometimes with adoration and sometimes with hatred. I even received a few emails from people on the matter referring to the possibility that this could be a violation of the terms of service set forth by Valve. However, in my defense, I was only using information that was freely provided by Valve, and at anytime could be removed by them. At no time did Valve remove these commands from the game, or block the ability of my plugin, and so while they did not publicly state their indifference to its use, they're lack of action could be taken as a signal that while my plugin was maybe unethical, it was not violating any rules. I continued to receive countless emails from people including not only a few death threats but a few fake emails from lawyers threatening lawsuits against me.

While my plugin went through at least ten different iterations, version 1.82 was my last official release. When I started working on the plugin I was unemployed at the time. After finding employment I could no longer find the time to dedicate to it, and so I left it as it was, out there for everyone to have, on the condition that if anyone altered the plugin they at least credited me with its creation. After all, I had never asked for a penny for months of development, but I felt had anyone with knowledge in coding AMXX plugins wanted to modify the plugin, I atleast deserved acknowledgment. Soon work began to take up too much of my time, and I could no longer dedicate time to my hobbies, and though I loved playing with those guys, I had to quit playing CS. Sure, once in a great while I would show up to say “HI” and show I was still alive, but I never really played much more after that, and soon after would completely quit playing the game altogether.

Now the point of my lengthy tale, is two fold. It's funny that this Supreme Court ruling comes around the same time that I am reminded of this tale. See I was chatting in Internet Relay Chat (IRC) with some friends about some things, and I kind of brought up the story of AMXX_FUCKOFF and that I was little perturbed, because the last time I took the time out to Google the plugin by name I found that a Spanish developer had taken the source code of the plugin, changed everything in it word for word to be in Spanish and removed every instance of my handle (jsauce) from the source and then placed it online as his creation. Now, I am definitely someone who fights hard against intellectual property (IP) rights, because IP is pure nonsense, so seeing this didn't piss me off because it was altered but rather that credit for its creation had been removed. I may be someone who thinks music artists should not complain when someone has their music remixed or when someone shares a song online, but I certainly have a problem if they receive absolutely no credit for it. While a person doesn't own the idea itself, putting thoughts into something coherent and comprehensible for others should get some credit, no I don't mean financially either. A simple little blurb, stating where the content was taken from originally is all that is needed, giving credit where credit is due. But I digress, so the point I was making was that two things became clear to me.

The treatment of individuals based solely on belief in ones guilt is wrong, it violates not only human rights as a principle, but the constitution of the United States. If we are to have any semblance of civility in this country, we need to stick to the fair and ethical treatment of individuals as a matter of principle but more so a matter of law. I understand the reason for strip-searching individuals who are arrested for violent crimes, after all allowing them to bring a potentially dangerous instrument into the prison population could have devastating consequences. As a matter of purely law, everyone is entitled to the protection of “Life, Liberty and Property” under the constitution. So allowing anyone to bring a weapon into a prison that could be used to kill a person, depriving that person of their constitutional right to live, is wrong.

So the government has a duty to protect everyone from anyone who's mission it is to take the rights of someone else away. The problem is that Albert Florence hadn't committed any crime worthy of being violent, in fact this upstanding citizen did everything right in his life to be a contributing, important part of society. His only mistake was a minor traffic infraction, a mistake anyone could make. There is no situation, where a reasonable person would believe a man, who had never committed a crime in his life would suddenly enter jail with a shiv inserted in his rectum, intent on killing the first random prisoner he encountered. Because of this, as a matter of law, the government cannot search an individual. It is that simple. So based purely on the words of the constitution alone, this situation should never have occurred, but since it did, the justice system has within it a principle of fairness, that allows the courts to make an individual whole again. That means if a person or persons takes away something of yours, the courts can grant you a judgment against the person or persons who took whatever it was, away from you, making you whole again, in the law this is called practical damages.

Beyond that, is a principle known in the justice system called punitive damages, that allows a judge the ability to punish a person or persons under the law. Punitive damages are normally assessed only when the individual is grievously damaged, either through malice or wanting ignorance or disregard. Knowing full well that a person using your product is going to likely die, but allowing them to continue, without informed consent or a complete retraction of the product, could be a case for punitive damages. Such is the case of cigarettes, when lawyers for individuals who were addicted to cigarettes and dying of cancer, brought civil suit against the manufacturers and came out victorious. The individuals in that case were awarded punitive damages, because the cigarette manufacturers openly sold a product to consumers without warning them of its effects. Further more, the manufacturers testified on several occasions that there was no proof that cigarette smoke caused any injury, even in the face of anecdotal evidence to the contrary.

This case would have seemed to be pretty straight forward if you asked anyone before the Supreme Court decision, after all common sense tells you that, if the extent of your criminal behavior was limited to a traffic violation, you were unlikely to carry a murderous weapon into jail with the intent of harming someone. Albert Florence was not only entitled to actual damages suffered as a result of this humiliation but punitive damages to prevent it from ever happening to anyone else again. Had justice been on the LEFT side Monday morning, instead of the RIGHT side, this may have been the case.

My treatment of individuals who had never been tried or convicted of cheating, is very parallel to the situation at hand. I had no reason to believe that an individual is likely a cheater without having had been previously proven, and since no such test was ever administered, the punishment was clearly unjust. The same is true for Albert Florence, since there was no expectation that he would bring a weapon into jail with him, having never been convicted of a crime in his life, it was unreasonable to search him on that premise. So having already proven that constitutionally this case is a slam dunk, we must assume since the decision was a “line in the sand” draw between conservatives and liberals, the 5-4 decision against Albert Florence was purely political in nature.

And so comes the second part of my argument. Since its pretty clear that the line of partisanship has infected every branch of our government, its now time to burn the constitution. Now I'm not suggesting we burn the constitution merely because we have two sides in disagreement of topics, after all debate is a healthy and wonderful thing, but when that debate is less about right and wrong and more about money and oppression than yes, I have a problem. At a fundamental level, no one hearing this situation could passionately argue that Albert Florence deserved the treatment he got, conservative or liberal, which means when the Supreme Court made their decision, it was a decision made out of a point, not out of a law. Since the liberals on the court felt they needed to go the right way, the conservatives of the court felt it was their duty to oppose the liberal argument, purely on the principle that even though you are right, I must disagree with you.

This is a very slippery slope, because it means that justice is not truly blind, that had Albert Florence been a rich white male, instead of a middle-class or poor black male, this decision may have been completely opposite. If we are not going to uphold the constitution and the oaths we take, why do we pretend at all? Why not simply burn the constitution and impose a Fascist totalitarian state of control, one in which the government tells its citizens how they can live, what they can do, and who they can be with. Why not take away everyone's right to free speech, free press, and right to petition the government. After all, if the government is unwilling to listen, protesting it's unconstitutional treatment of individuals, isn't really needed at all.

The idea that we live in a democracy is a joke, a democracy implies that everyone has a voice and everyone is heard, but that is simply not the truth at all. The only voice being heard is the majority, and right now that majority is ruled by conservatives with an agenda. On purely record alone, over the last year, congressional conservatives have sided with corporations to take away consumer rights, demonstrated their willingness to sell laws for a price by imposing laws that undermine fairness and ethics, and to oppose laws that provide American citizens with beneficial well being purely based on the fact that it's a liberal idea. Recently, the Supreme Court has made a decision regarding the health care initiative (though it won't be heard until June) started by President Obama to get everyone in America affordable health care and impose laws that protect Americans against unjust rules and regulations insurance companies use to restrict or deny a person health coverage. At face value this seems like every American would want to have this. Unfortunately, it wasn't a conservative idea, but one that came from the mind of a perceived liberal. Having come from President Obama instead of one of the house republicans, this initiative came with staunch resistance from conservatives, playing the “socialism” trump card they like to play whenever a Democratic President makes a suggestion.

What's most funny about this whole thing is that most Americans are socialists and don't even know it. Have you ever used food stamps? Have you ever used a hospital without having the ability to pay? Do you send your children to public school? Have you ever needed to call the police or fire department for help? Have you ever bought a piece of corn at the supermarket or any produce for that matter? Do you have any friends or family that are in the armed services? Are you retired, or have a retired parent living on social security benefits? Were you injured, or born with a malady, and now accept government assistance? If you answered Yes to any one of these questions, you have participated in socialism. In fact, most modern governments are a combination of Socialism and Democratic Capitalism. The two are not mutually exclusive concepts.

The fact is not everyone is perfect, most people need a helping hand, and a government built purely on capitalism, democratic or not would not function for 99% of people. The only people who would benefit from such a government are the wealthiest individuals. Social programs are needed to supplement those individuals who are unable to benefit purely based on an inability to pay. Imagine if you will for a second, you are sitting at home and suddenly a fire breaks out, you call 911 and the fire department shows up. However, there is a cost associated with sending the fire department, the trucks cost money to maintain, fuel to keep them going, and it costs money to pay the individuals who fight those fires. It also costs money to pump water from your town water source underground to a fire hydrant where it can be pushed through a hose and sprayed onto the fire in order to put it out.

When you really begin to think about it, the act of putting out a fire can be very expensive, and someone has to pay for that. So what happens if when the fire department gets there, they ask you for your credit card so they can swipe it, better hope its not declined, or you have some cash on hand, or your house is going to burn to the ground. You may think this is ridiculous but is it more ridiculous than going to a hospital and being declined service because you can't pay them? In a purely capitalist society, money quite literally makes the cogs of the machine move and not being able to pay for something is like throwing a wrench into the works.

Look the guys in Congress don't work for you, they work for the corporations. Millions of dollars were spent in the 90's by big insurance companies to stomp out a single payer health care initiative that would have given every person in this country the ability to see a doctor if they needed to, with no obligation to pay other than what was already being paid in taxes. Of course the lobbying groups spent millions smearing this idea turning the idea of socialism into a vulgar word. The mere mention of which, sends most conservatives now into a full on rage, without ever really knowing why. Indoctrination works by convincing less intelligent people that something is right or wrong, not based on fact, but rather a belief system. That is, teaching someone to think about something the way you think about it, without allowing critical thinking.

Indoctrination is a slow process because it relies on the fact that the person is unaware that it is happening to them. To the point, someone who has been indoctrinated, is unable to consider other evidence, because the beliefs they hold have been so intertwined into their being, that to contradict them would be to undermine their very thought process. It might have started sometime during the Reagan years or maybe before, but this slow indoctrination of conservatism to the ignorant, and uneducated class of society has allowed them to build a base of people who are anything but free thinkers. Now I don't want to say that all conservatives are poor white ignorant people, because we know that’s not true, however saying that poor white ignorant people tend to be conservatives tends to be true.

The easiest way to get someone to oppose something that clearly undermines their own social welfare is to hijack some popular topic that the individual holds dear, make them believe that you believe as they do, and make them believe that someone out there does not feel the same way. A small example of this is the conservative christian movement, who has spent much of their time convincing people in poor southern regions to vote against their own interests purely on the fact that liberals do not hold the same values as they do. After all, according to the conservative agenda all liberals are atheists faggots who care nothing about human life, so much so they are willing to end the life of a baby in in utero. And really that's what this whole thing comes down to doesn't it?

Conservative agendas being what they are, did you expect this to be about anything else? Conservatives have a view of women that has been eroded since the feminist movement of the 60's. Rich white men, want easy to control women, who's existence is purely for their pleasure. A woman exists for no other reason than to please her man. A woman's job is to clean her husband's home, fix him dinner when he comes home from work, sexually please him when he requires it, and give him children when he wants it. Giving a woman the right to vote, take a job, or decide if she wants to terminate an unwanted pregnancy or not, does not fit into their tightly held belief system.

In 1972, Roe v. Wade changed everything, because it made it legal to terminate a pregnancy by giving that right to the woman. Ever since then, the conservative agenda has been pushing itself forward all with the intent on reversing this decision. So it should be no surprise to anyone that now that the conservatives have been given judicial control of our highest court system, they are going to use it. I believe they are merely waiting for the right time, and the right case to bring before the Supreme Court, it is only a matter of time before Roe v. Wade is overturned.

Now the good news, you can stop this, all of this. Stop electing conservatives who do not care about you, unless you are rich and white and have power. Being that this is still a democracy, the power of the people to control it's government is still absolute, but it is my belief that it is the intention of the conservative movement to limit this slowly overtime, passing control of the government from the people to the corporations and the wealthy. What I believe is happening is equivalent to a CS SLOWHACK of our civil liberties. The time for revolution is now, the longer you wait, the less likely you can affect change.

Exploiting people's emotions of fear, envy and anxiety is not hope, it's not change, it's partisanship. We don't need partisanship. We don't need demagoguery, we need solutions. - Paul Ryan

Partisanship is our great curse. We too readily assume that everything has two sides and that it is our duty to be on one or the other.  - James Harvey Robinson

To the American people I say, awaken to what is happening. It is the duty of each citizen to be vigilant, to protect liberty, to speak out, left and right and disagree lest be trampled underfoot by misguided zealotry and extreme partisanship. -  Robert Royd

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