Who Am I?

A simple question with infinite meaning can often times be ignored

Because the question one thinks is simple is often not simply answered

Which came first: the egg or the bird? We often have asked ourselves

And strangely no answer can come from the question upon which our mind may dwell

“Who am I” I ask, a question so simple but with no answer of which I’m aware

So how easy a question so simple and honest can be something deeper I’ll share

I often was taught that I came from a God who loves me and shows me he cares

Later at school I learned that a person is the clothes that he or she wears

Nature and nurture determine the person which we will one day become

Some traits are genetic, some traits come from parents, and those traits make up the grand sum

There’s Moses and Jesus and Darwin and Freud, and others with grand explanations

But can their answers be taken for truth without having further citations?

My feelings, my thoughts, my words, and my acts aren’t always unique to me

But ALL of my feelings, my thoughts, and my words in nobody else you will see

Some tell me of heaven and what I’ll become the minute right after I die

Some tell me that death is the end of this life, and you’ll never come back if you try

So often I wonder: does my existence have existence far beyond this small earth?

Can my existence exist on forever, and did I exist before birth?

Some give me answers without telling how, others the “hows” without “whys”

But no one can answer what happens hereafter until that same person dies

Some say we are one, just a different projection of who “we” really are

I’d say that’s an answer, but in my own answer I wouldn’t go quite that far

My answer is this, I know who I am, because who I am is me

And this person I am, or who I become is exactly who I want to be

I might not know all of the answers, like where I’ll go when I die

Or whether or not we lived before birth, or if God watches down from the sky

But the answer I know is who I am now, and knowing that sets me free

To do the things I feel I should do, and to be who I want to be

Some people may say I am lost or confused, or maybe I just lost my way

Because I choose not to believe, or to do, or to say the things that they say

You’ll never be me and I’ll never be you, so how can you know who I am?

Some tell me I’m this, some tell me I’m that, so how can I tell what’s the scam?

So I will decide what’s best for me, and you must decide for you

Because I am one, cause if I were we, then we would have to be two

So questions of who we become after death or what we were before birth

Don’t have to be all of or part of the answer of who we are when we live on this earth

I do things and says things that others find odd, but also I find others strange

But if we can just accept who we are, then acceptance requires no change

On Repentance

A friend of mine recently was wondering what my thoughts are on repentance. This is a tough question for me because I don’t really believe in sin anymore. So I am going to approach this in the viewpoint I had when I did believe in sin. I will attempt to use the scriptures that I had growing up in the LDS church to explain my reasoning. There are some scriptures which I was not happy with (namely some of the scriptures in the D&C [Doctrine and Covenants]) because I did not feel that they fell in line with the teachings that should be prominent in Christianity.

First I will say that sin is one of my biggest qualms with religion. People will refer to the Ten Commandments as their moral code. Others will refer to the Bible as a whole for their moral code. I don’t understand how either of these can be used to create a moral code. The Bible (namely the Old Testament, but parts of the New Testament) can be used to justify incest, slavery, polygamy, and one could even argue that it justifies genocide. Most people who defend the Bible as the word of God will claim that polygamy and murder of women and children are very evil deeds. It only takes one read through and you will find countless examples of both (All links are to the KJV that the LDS church has online):

-Killing: 1 Samuel 15:2-3, Jeremiah 48:10, Joshua 8:1-29, Joshua 6:20-21, Judges 20:48, and countless other examples

-Incest: Genesis 19:30-38, Genesis 38, Exodus 6:20, Genesis 20:12 (there may be a consideration that Sarah is actually Abraham’s niece, there are a few other examples of both “holy” men and unholy men which committed incest

-Polygamy: Genesis 16:1-11, Genesis 29:21-28, 2 Samuel 2:1-2, Countless other prophets and kings with their wives and concubines

I give these only as a few examples. The LDS church has an official explanation for the polygamy thing and as to why Joseph Smith practiced polygamy and several other LDS prophets after him until the official declaration was released, and later added to LDS cannon. I just want to make the point that the Bible is full of things that are not considered by modern society as moral things, but yet modern Christianity has set the Bible as its source of righteous standards and morals.

Why we have Ten Commandments in front of courthouses I do not know, but I’m not upset about it. I just think that it is more of a symbol than actually standing for a moral code. After all things like worshiping other gods, lying (when not in cases of perjury or fraud), saying the name of God in vain, committing adultery, not honoring your parents, coveting, making graven images, and not honoring the Sabbath day are all perfectly legal. If we count bearing false witness as in the case of perjury or fraud then there are in fact only three out of the ten that are illegal within the US.

Whether you agree with me on this or not, I don’t really care. I just have come to the conclusion that morality and ethics are determined by society and individuals. What “God has said” can change, and very well has changed over time and between religions. For some drinking is a sin; yet Jesus himself drank wine as it was the custom for his time. Some say that only being a drunkard is a sin, but if you read Noah the prophet got quite drunk one night and it is argued that Ham sodomized his father. When Lot’s daughters seduced him he was also too drunk to tell they were his own daughters suggesting that he also did his fair share of heavy drinking.

So as I was growing up I was told by the church what was and what wasn’t a sin. This was a long list of do’s: go to church, read scriptures daily, say prayers daily, pay tithing, serve in the church, etc… as well as a list of do nots: no sexual acts of any kind before marriage, don’t rebel against the church or your parents, don’t drink/smoke/drink coffee or tea/do drugs, don’t work/shop/do “worldly” things on Sunday, don’t lie/cheat/steal, etc… This is all along with a list of cultural do not’s and do’s which are not official commandments according to the church, but are implied either by being taught by a prophet of the church or just a cultural thing or “suggestions”. These include: not watching sports on Sunday (Kimball The Miracle of Forgiveness), not watching rated R movies (there are several talks on this, I only linked one), not dating until you’re 16 (For the Strength of Youth), no caffeine or sometimes just coca-cola, other taboo things like sleeping with someone of the opposite sex even if there are no sexual acts performed.

I was a confused young man in a world or so many do’s and do not’s that I felt like I had lost sight of what was really important. Jesus often criticized the Pharisees for their strict obedience to the law as opposed to following a higher law or the most important commandment which was to love God and to love your neighbor. So why is it that we put so much emphasis on the laws and commandments which Jesus is not found preaching in the New Testament, and instead focus on things that are only covered by a few verses in the entire Bible? I had often struggled with this, and therefore struggled with the idea of repentance. If forsaking sin is a stipulation for repentance then how am I ever supposed to repent if I have to worry about doing so many things all the time? I don’t think I ever fully grasped the idea of repentance because I was always stuck on feeling horrible about myself, instead of focusing on making myself a better person.

If church is for sinners just like a hospital is for sick people, then how come we focus so much on the sins in church? It’s like going to a hospital to receive chemo for your lung cancer, and instead receiving a long lecture series on how smoking causes cancer. I feel that we (or I felt that we) focused way too much energy as  religious people in condemning and defining sin that we lose the big picture or becoming better people. I feel that one of the biggest reasons that pornography is such a “huge problem” in the LDS church is because you talk so much about it. Guaranteed that a normal 13 year old boy that hears someone talking about the stuff he saw the other day on the internet is going to go home with only more desire to look at it.

But I digress; the whole point of this is to talk about repentance and my thoughts on it. The LDS church defines repentance as:

“A change of mind and heart that brings a fresh attitude toward God, oneself, and life in general. Repentance implies that a person turns away from evil and turns his heart and will to God, submitting to God’s commandments and desires and forsaking sin. True repentance comes from a love for God and a sincere desire to obey his commandments. All accountable persons have sinned and must repent in order to progress toward salvation. Only through the atonement of Jesus Christ can our repentance become effective and accepted by God.”

I think that repentance is about a change of heart (and LDS doctrine agrees) more than a change of behavior. A change of heart is not something that is given by a list of commandments or things that one must do to repent. If you don’t feel bad for doing something you cannot by definition repent. If you feel bad for doing something you’ve already started to repent automatically. One can’t just have a “change of heart” because they hear a talk in church or their bishop/priest tells them to. If you tell someone who is gay that they “must have a change of heart” or they’ll go to hell is like walking up to a democrat and telling them they must vote republican or when they die they’ll lose all their estate to the government (I use the term is like, there are obvious differences I’m just making a quick analogy). You’re asking someone who feels good about what they are doing (because that is what their natural inclination is) to stop doing what they feel they want to do.

It’s true that one could argue that almost no one is repentant because almost everyone feels good doing some kind of sin. I’m not trying to say that, I’m trying to say that if you feel BETTER keeping a commandment that you feel comes from God than sinning, that would indicated true repentance because you had a “change of heart”.

Feeling guilty for doing something is very different than feeling guilty for doing something you feel is bad. There is a difference between doing something that is wrong and worried about it affecting your salvation/church status/condemnation and feeling sad that you did something innately evil/upset God. Some people go to church because they fear hell; I’d argue that that person with that attitude wouldn’t make it into heaven because they feared God not loved him. The same could be said about the repentance process we have in churches, we fear the shame/punishment more than we feel upset for doing something wrong.

I sometimes hurt other’s feelings with the things I say. I genuinely feel bad because I hurt their feelings, but it would do no good to feel bad if it was just because I feared the social/economic repercussions of offending someone. Just like the brown-nosers are really annoying in a corporate world, I’m sure that Jesus would feel the same about those in the religious or spiritual world. The crazy thing about most people’s beliefs in modern Christianity is that God knows the intentions or your heart as well as your actions. In my opinion merely “going through the motions” isn’t repentance, it’s just trying to brown-nose God. So that’s probably why step one in repentance is having a change of heart because you can’t really do the rest properly without that part.

So how can one truly feel this “change of heart”? Well according to LDS doctrine everyone receives what is referred to as the light of Christ which the Book of Mormon prophet Moroni teaches is basically our conscience. So God gave us this inherent gift to know what is right and wrong. Once you are baptized into the LDS church, you are given a further gift: the gift of the Holy Ghost which is like the light of Christ on cocaine (or whatever your stimulant or choice is). This often confused me because I was told that people that live in remote areas and aren’t taught Christian values are treated as innocent in the eyes of God. This as an answer to my question if you don’t believe in pre-destination and God is a fair God then what about people who aren’t taught about the truth and are evil (cannibalistic tribes, warlords, etc…). I was told they would still have a chance (and according to Mormon doctrine it will be in the spirit world in the life hereafter) to accept the truth. Other Christians have told me that they will be judged on what knowledge they were given. But according to LDS doctrine everyone is given the light of Christ which will help us determine what is good and what isn’t good. So then how come there are so many different opinions on righteousness and sin? I still have that question, and am waiting for a good response (if you think you have a good response, I’ve probably already heard it and don’t find it convincing).

So we’ve got the point now that we have to have a change of heart, and that magically comes from God through our conscience, the light of Christ, or whatever you want to call it. So after that what are the steps? Well Jesus taught a pretty good lesson when he said “Go and sin no more”. Obviously not doing the sin again is a very good measure of how repentant one is. But does that mean if we commit the sin again we aren’t repentant? The truth is I don’t know. I don’t believe that any man is at liberty to speak or to judge. Romans 14:13 expresses my best feelings on the topic, don’t judge but only work towards helping others towards their goals of righteousness. After all Paul argues earlier in the chapter that we will all stand accountable to God at the last day for our own actions, so why should we be concerned with others?

It is exactly this topic that I want to bring up another step in the repentance process: confession. In 1 John 1:9 we read that confession leads to forgiveness from God. I agree with this, because it is part of being honest with ourselves. If God knows everything, then denying something to God means that we don’t accept that we ourselves have done something. I view confession to God as something more for us to accept what we have done rather that the need of God to hear our confession. After all if God is all powerful and all knowing why would he need to hear a confession from us? But confession is brought up typically in a sense of confessing to God, so why do Catholics confess to a priest and why do Mormons confess to a Bishop?

Well James 5:16 seems to be the only evidence that one should confess publicly within the Bible. So as to the Catholic belief in confession I cannot speak to as I am neither Catholic nor did I grow up Catholic. Therefore I have no opinion on that matter. The LDS idea of confession does hold some scriptural value if you believe in the LDS cannon of the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants. The high priest Alma was given the commandment from God to go and basically demand repentance of those in the church who had “been deceived” into sinning. In this case he basically was given authority to excommunicate from the church those members who would not confess of their sins and show a repentant attitude. D&C 59:12 refers to the same type of thing as James 5:16 that we should confess our sins to other members of the church. So of all the mountain of scriptural verses, only three clearly state you need a public confession (I lied, it’s actually four. There’s another story just like the Alma story above). But the point being why is it required for repentance if it is only stated four times in LDS scripture. On top of all that, the two from the Book of Mormon point more towards serious and open sinning rather than sin that is not open and more discrete.

It is my opinion (and kind of was as a believing member of the church) that sins are not required to be confessed to a Bishop because it really doesn’t have any doctrinally sound base. If the LDS church would actually be open about what they accept as doctrine and those things which are “the opinions of men” within the church leadership then it would be much easier to accept it as doctrine (although if the church accepted what all church leaders taught/implemented it would also open up a Pandora’s box). In fact confession to the bishop is in the LDS leadership handbook without a reason other than “someone along the line was inspired to put it in there”. The official stance of when to confess is very blurry, and the handbook contains information on what is required to confess to the bishop. Instead of going into detail I’ll just say it’s mostly “serious” sins such as anything sexual in nature or more serious word of wisdom problems (drinking, smoking, etc…). This article gives a really wishy washy explanation of when confession is required. Basically it says if you feel bad about it you need to confess.

Also this article gives the reason for confession: it is to relieve you of the burden of the sin. I have heard countless stories from bishops and in conferences about how much better everyone feels after confessing to the bishop. I can admit I have felt better after confession to the bishop. But why did I feel better? It’s because I was TAUGHT that in order to be forgiven I had to confess. Honestly I felt like God and I were good and that there was no need to confess to the bishop other than “that’s what you do”. I don’t feel that it’s necessary for anyone to confess to a bishop, if it really scarred you it’s much better for you and more appropriate to talk to a therapist. OK some people might feel better getting the sin off their chest by telling a bishop, but I think the number of people who “need” to feel that relief have the “burden” because they’re taught that they won’t even be forgiven until it happens. Some people feel the need to confess little things to their bishop and are told that confession of a sin of that nature is “not required” for repentance. They obviously felt bad enough about it to confess so drawing a blurry line of what’s required and what’s not required for repentance is ridiculous.

So let’s say you do confess to the bishop. What happens then? Well pretty much anything actually. The bishop has free reign of how to discipline you, and if he doesn’t feel comfortable about something he refers to the higher authority a stake president. Well even if I feel repentant the stake president can tell me I can’t give talks in church or attend the temple for a year if he feels it’s necessary. So even if you received revelation from God that he forgave you, a person in authority in the church can receive revelation contrary to your feelings and discipline you. So you say “it’s ok, he’ll be judged for that in the afterlife and he knows his responsibility”. Well then what was the point of you praying and receiving revelation for yourself if someone else is just going to override it? That’s the problem with this confession system; it takes away your ability to finish the repentance process on your own, and puts it into the hands of a “Judge in Israel”.

Another problem I see in the system is in the case of missionaries and students at church-owned schools. If a missionary at a young age had sex before his mission once, repented of it (all but confessed), and was a year and eleven months into his mission he could be sent home by the mission president for being unworthy. So he did all that work, and you praised him for having the spirit and being a great missionary all that time only to send him home because he had missed the confession part. What if he didn’t feel bad about it until that time in his mission? That means he didn’t need to confess it according to Elder Grow. There are problems in this system in that transgressions that were committed prior to a new obligation are counted towards you as if you had just committed them. Also the discipline is so inconsistent that it’s sickening.

You see it all just depends on your bishop or stake president. If you did something bad a long time ago some will say you’re ok, others will say that you are still in need of repentance. The honor codes at church schools that one signs are agreements for proper conduct while attending the school. They are not signed agreements for previous sins. So to send a student home from a church school because of previous sins (just like the missionary example) is much less warranted than the missionary example. I have seen this happen multiple times and it upsets me. If there was a need for repentance, then why do they need to go home and resolve it with another bishop? They are confessing to relieve themselves of the burden not to be formally disciplined right…?

To finish off, I want to talk about the inappropriate nature socially of confession. When one confesses to church leaders typically you have to go into discrete detail about the sin. For example I couldn’t just say me and the girlfriend got naughty last weekend, I’m sorry. I’d have to describe who touched what and how. That’s all fine and good (albeit creepy) for an adult to confess that, but when young men and women some as young as 11 are confessing these things to a sometimes older than 50 year old male it sounds absurd. Since women can’t hold the priesthood however these young women must go in and confess in detail their sins to their older male counterpart. I think in any other social setting that kind of discussion would be completely inappropriate.

So I have talked a lot about what is sin and why I think confession isn’t needed or appropriate in most cases. But all in all I think repentance is something that is a personal matter between you and God. If you feel the need to confess, then confess. If you feel guilty because someone told you it was required to confess, try to talk to God first and see what he thinks. After all in the end you’ll be judged by him, and I’ve been told he tries not to go back on his word. Just like sin is a personal thing between you and God so is repentance. You do it to please God, not to appease him. In that sense you should really be doing it to also please yourself if you feel that pleasing God is a happy thing. If you don’t think pleasing God is a happy thing then please re-think your religion/religious status.

I will just say that I live my by what Jesus taught “Judge not, that ye be not judged”. No matter what you believe or how you feel about repentance, as long as it helps you become the person you want to become I’m all for it (granted you do no harm to others). Jesus is kind loving and Christians believe he died for your sins. I’m pretty sure if he was willing to die for you and suffer horrible agony, then he loves you plenty enough to not be a prick about the repentance process.

On Pascal's Wager

A recent set of conversations with several people got me thinking about something I once believed in firmly. For those of you unfamiliar is Pascal’s Wager or Pascal’s gambit this Wikipedia article sums it up well. Basically Pascal argues that since there’s a possibility that God does exist and the economics of the afterlife depend on your belief in God that it is better (in a economic sense spiritually) to believe in God. In other words a belief in God may cause some temporal losses in this life, but the potentially infinite losses in the afterlife of living with an atheistic viewpoint far outweigh and losses in this life. And if it turns out that God doesn’t exist then the most you have to lose is some kind of finite loss here in this life.

                Having grown up Christian, Pascal’s wager appealed to me when I grew older and found contradictions in religion which raised doubts in me. Pascal having contributed significantly to physics and mathematics was for me a good role model to base my philosophy of life on. I was in fact very ok with the fact that even though I might be missing out on some life experiences because of my beliefs (or possibly persecution or ridicule) it was worth it. And if in fact God didn’t exist then we’d all die and it wouldn’t matter in the slightest.

                This whole line of thought has really bothered me in recent years, in that technically there is not justice if there is a God. There is justice perhaps in a religious sense, but not justice in a truly equal justice sense. If God exists and the atheists are wrong then all the believers get to mock the atheists and send them to hell. In fact no matter what religion you are, you will still get to say “well at least I believed in a God/gods” as they get some kind of satisfaction in hell for choosing the wrong God. If atheists that don’t believe in any afterlife are right then they will never get the satisfaction of saying “ha I was right”. They will simply just die and disappear like the rest of everyone.

                All humor aside, I have started to look into my initial evaluation of Pascal’s wager. Recently I have looked into apatheism and almost convinced myself that I was one. The truth is that I am not. If there was a God and I knew about it I would change my life. If that/those God or gods was/were just, merciful, and loving I would change my lifestyle to helping them accomplish their goals. Those goals would ultimately be the happiness of others. In my opinion this is accepting people for who they are (after all they would be their creations and would want them accepted as just that) and helping them become caring and loving human beings. If this/these God/gods was/were unjust I would have to rethink my life. I am very strongly inclined to stick to a value system. If the higher deity was unjust I would have to outweigh my eternal punishments with compromising my values. I don’t know what I would do in the situation, but I’m afraid I would choose eternal punishment over worshipping a cruel heartless deity. So the only reason I’m not an apatheist is because I fear compromising my values to worship a cruel God to save myself. This fear gives me uncertainty so I cannot with surety say that if there was a cruel God it would not change the way I live my life.

                So why do I bring up apatheism in a discussion about Pascal’s wager you ask. Well it’s because Pascal’s wager is an “argument of assumptions” as the citation on Wikipedia calls it. He approaches it from a Christian viewpoint which in my opinion is the first mistake. If one believes and worships Jesus Christ then they are wrong according to the God of Islam or Judaism. Will I get into heaven as a Christian if Jesus wasn’t in fact the son of God, but merely a prophet or maybe just a regular Jew? I don’t know. Will I get into heaven with a Christian God as a Muslim? I’ve been told by many that I wouldn’t. So here’s my problem with the whole wager, it’s based on assumptions that have just as much uncertainty as the existence of a deity. There’s no statistics or numbers to create a valid economic model.

                So I am an apatheist in that if I found out there was a loving God, I wouldn’t change a thing in my life. I live by a standard that is to love others and respect and honor their values. I avoid doing things to others that I know would hurt me. I try to avoid judging others because they act different or say weird things, or maybe even believe things that seem absurd to me. I do judge, it’s in our human nature to, but I know that it’s against my value system to do it. I don’t think I’m in a position to claim that others are sinning, but can only determine what a sin is for me. I don’t do things I consider “sins”; in the same respect if your “sins” are not negatively affecting someone else’s life, then I’m in no position to call it a “sin”. So I feel that if God is a loving merciful God, he would see that I am accomplishing his goals even if I didn’t believe in him. And if he is loving and merciful he can overlook my faults and will understand that he did not show proof of himself enough for me personally to believe in him. If he is not loving and merciful than even if I did believe in him I doubt my life would be worth much to him. So I will take Pascal’s wager from an apatheist perspective. My losses here in this life are none, since I would live my life as a loving caring person with or without a God. My losses in the afterlife are (based on my assumptions) infinite if God is not loving, or none if he is. Either way I have the same chances in the afterlife according to my assumptions, so it’s economical to live the life I do.

                My whole argument with all of this is merely that any model of any God or religion is based on assumptions. Those assumptions could be guided by inspiration, answers to prayers, a holy book, etc… It’s fine to have a belief system, and it’s perfectly ok to live your life according to your beliefs. When you start telling others that their models will end them up in hell is where I have a problem. They are basing their model of different assumptions, and you have no right to take that away from them. So I will say this: the house always wins. Whatever or whomever you bet your lifestyle on it won’t change the house rules. No one knows for sure what those rules are, so whatever your wager just try to keep your hands on your own spiritual chips.

How An Idealist Lost His Ideals

For those of you who have studied about the MBTI personality preferences, I am an INFJ. Some people think the whole thing is just a giant scam, or don’t believe in it because the online test didn’t describe them. Well the truth is I have taken several tests before and even the same test multiple times while getting different answers. So the best thing to do is study the personality types and understand more what your preferences are rather than trying to interpret what each question is asking on some silly online test. I will say for me INFJ fits me very well.

For those who aren’t familiar with the personality types or the INFJ type I will briefly sum it up. If this is boring you can skip the next few paragraphs. We are known as “idealists” or “the protector”. This comes from a combination of the following functions:

Our primary function is introverted intuition (Ni). This means we are always analyzing situations and predicting future events based on observed patterns. An example of this for me is the fact that I can plan out hypotheticals such as: “if I won the lottery I would…” and could honestly spend about an hour describing in detail how I would spend each penny. We also have a certain thirst for understanding and often come to realizations like “the more you know, the more you realize you don’t know.” INTJs share this in common, and many times (myself included) INFJs feel they are INTJs because we share the same rare primary function.

Our secondary function is extraverted feeling (Fe). Although introverted we have a deep sense of emotional connection to other people. I have been told often that I am way too sensitive, and worry about offending people in situations that it would be impossible to be offended by. We have a strange protection of people’s feelings, and also a sensitivity to others interactions with us. We also have are much more open to self-disclosure (this blog is probably a good example) and use it to connect with others.

Our tertiary function is introverted thinking (Ti). This is a process of taking data and developing ideas or models in order to make sense of something or describe it concisely and clearly. It involves categorizing things and finding distinctions and patterns. I have developed this in my studies as a physical scientist. Although it is my tertiary function it helps me to model things into a “big picture” and to help me understand how life works. I do have to admit since this is my tertiary function it is often more difficult for me in the physical sciences to develop a non-personal approach to the subject. I enjoy talking with INTPs (although they have Ti as their dominant function) because it is interesting to philosophize with them.

Our inferior function is extroverted sensing (Se). I guess this is sort of experiencing some kind of “oneness” with the world. It being my inferior function I don’t notice it as much so it is difficult for me to describe in detail.

Not being a social scientist of any sort I can’t really give the expert rundown of my personality type. One thing that is very clear is that we are value or ideal driven. It’s the whole “I’d die for the cause” mentality or “this is worthless because it has no meaning”. Those are both extremes, but sum up the underlying drive for at least me personally. I do like one line from the Wikipedia article on INFJs: “Sensitive and complex, they are adept at understanding complicated issues and driven to resolve differences in a cooperative and creative manner.” If I could describe my personality in one sentence it would be: A private but caring and sensitive thinker. Now that we have all that boring personality stuff out of the way, I will tell the story of how an idealist lost his ideals and his struggle to find them again.

Since I am highly value driven, growing up in a religious home suited me very well. I defended my faith with honor, but was also very careful not to offend others’ beliefs. There were things, however, in the Mormon
faith that made me feel like an outcast in the religion:

The “the tolerance trap”: It was difficult for me because the LDS religion teachings include that of avoiding the “tolerance trap” which for me is insensitive to others feelings. Being a very strong extroverted feeler, I personally don’t like making others feel like they are bad people for doing something different. It was easy for me to go to church and get fired up about “yes this is the truth, and God will strike down the sinner”, but then in my daily interactions I was embarrassed by what my church actually preached. In defense of the LDS church I feel they have made great strides to be much more tolerant and “new-age”. There were other issues that also bothered me like the fact that blacks were not allowed to hold the priesthood until 1978, the touchy feely side of me found this to be very offensive. Other examples include the conduct of leadership within the church, and what I viewed as nepotism within the general leadership of the church. I can’t blame the Mormon “gospel” for those things, but it did help me separate myself socially and culturally.

The “One True Church”: I think this has been a big turn off for me for religion in general. MOST (there are exceptions) religions claim to have the truth, and that all others don’t have any or only just a part of the truth. This conflicts with my personality strongly because of my introverted intuition and extroverted feeling. I just can’t handle conflict socially or ideologically. I longed so much to connect with everyone, but there was always this thing between us. “You never talk politics or religion at the dinner table”. I hated that I couldn’t connect with others, and would often try and find similarities between our faiths instead of talking about how much church was true. I hated that it was my responsibility to tell others they were wrong. I hated that my church preached of all the other churches that they are “all wrong; and [God] said that all their creeds were an abomination in his sight; that those professors were all corrupt; that: ‘they draw near to me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me, they teach for doctrines the commandments of men, having a form of godliness, but they deny the power thereof.’” It also bothered me for a long time because it doesn’t seem logical for God to let so many religions on the earth. I couldn’t handle the fact that people receive different spiritual manifestations and all claim to be “the one truth”. It seems inconsistent to me.

Every Member a Missionary: Just like any other church, the Mormons are very into their missionary movement. I hated the whole missionary thing for two reasons: I’m an introvert and I hate pushing my beliefs on others. As a Mormon you are encouraged from when you are young to make friends and share your beliefs. I didn’t have a lot of friends growing up because I really didn’t like socializing in the same way most people do. I prefer to have a small group of close friends that I am comfortable with. Also my extroverted feeling was always afraid of offending people with my religion. Once I went out with some missionaries as a teenager and we knocked on a door. The lady who answered said she had some bad experiences with some Mormons and didn’t want to talk to any more. I apologized profusely for her previous experiences and apologized for bothering her. She opened up to me and almost let us in. The missionary I was with criticized me and said that she was just making up excuses not to talk to us. I knew that was probably true, but also highly insensitive of this other missionary. All in all missionary work to me is annoying, I figured if my friends really were interested they would show interest. Since they didn’t I just let it be.

Trusting Leaders: A prominent Mormon apostle Dallin Oaks once stated, “it’s wrong to criticize leaders of the church, even if the criticisms are true.” If someone does something that is against my principles (in sometimes their own principles) that person loses some credibility in my sight. On my mission I disagreed with some of the leadership because I felt some of what they had to say did not fall in line with my belief system and values. In these times I was treated as rebellious, disobedient, and “in need of repentance”. I often times became defensive and even more passionate about these beliefs because they were being threatened. Some of them included pushing people to commit to be baptized, stop “wasting my time” on people who wouldn’t be baptized in the near future, and refusing coca-cola from people who offered it even though there is no rule in Mormonism about it. These are issues I felt strongly about for other reasons, but the fact that leaders labeled me as disobedient to God’s will for following what I perceived as God’s will was no less than irritating.

People Worship: There is a lot of talk about authority figures in the LDS church. I do not find it strange or offensive for people to think that Mormons worship Joseph Smith. They talk about him so much, and teach that Joseph Smith “has done more, save Jesus only, for salvation of men in this world, then any other man that ever lived in it.” There is never ending talk of how “Sheri Dew” has changed someone’s life or perspective. Students at church schools camp out overnight to get a front row seat if a prominent LDS leader comes to give a speech. For someone like me who’s motivator is strongly against praise (in fact I really hate being praised as much of a self-esteem booster it is) it is a real turn off to see this kind of behavior.

Doubt Your Doubts: “Doubt your doubts before your doubt your faith” was a popular phrase from a talk given by apostle Dieter Uchtdorf last October. I heard it from some people trying to help me come back to the faith. I won’t even go into the infinite irrational loop of what doubting doubts infers. I just want to talk about how the church (for obvious reasons) discourages intellectual thought. I will have to restate, the church discourages intellectual thought that might disagree with doctrine (they sure do love their apologists). Anyone who does some studying can find that scientists can fairly accurately date the earth to be around four and a half billion years old. I learned in seminary that God told Joseph Smith the earth is around six thousand years old and will only exist for seven thousand years temporally. There are other things that bothered me scientifically, and I had a difficult time being able to come up with a reasonable explanation to this clear contradiction. My personality hates contradictions in models and ideas so this bothered me for a long time. There were things I was able to explain like the idea behind God guided evolution, but others like the age of the earth or Noah’s ark I never really could come to terms with. When I asked questions I was always told “the answer is not important” or “you’ll learn when you die”. I hated that because I couldn’t understand the religion as a whole if there were pieces that didn’t fit into place.

Obedience With Exactness: You know that part in Pirate’s of the Carribean where they talk about the code and it turns out that they’re “more like ‘guidelines’”? Well that is exactly how I feel about rules in society. Clearly we have laws and there are some things that are just not ok in our society (because we have deemed it inappropriate as a collective). But there are other things that I would view as just suggestions that will help you. I think Jesus’ teachings are really good examples of that. He said it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. Does that mean rich people are unrighteous? Not at all, just that once you have wealth it is obvious that it will be easier to be greedy or arrogant. As missionaries we had rules regarding many things: no playing videos/watching TV/listening to music and rules for when to go to bed and when to get up. There were specific rules as to how many people we needed to talk to each day and some other weird things like in my mission we were not allowed to drink coca-cola. For a list of all the rules LDS missionaries have worldwide you can consult the missionary handbook. I understood the rules, and why we had them but for me I was not getting enough sleep and it was affecting my ability to work as a missionary. I would often sleep in or take naps because I would work harder and be happier after. I was told that I wasn’t baptizing people because I wasn’t obeying with exactness. Mormon apostle once recounted hearing from Mormon prophet Heber J Grant “My boy, you always keep your eye on the President of the Church and if he ever tells you to do anything, and it is wrong, and you do it, the Lord will bless you for it.” This kind of blind obedience could never sit with me, and I could not handle the fact that God would punish me for standing up for my beliefs.

There are many other problems I had being in the church that conflicted with either my personality or things that just bothered me. I feel I have covered many of the topics earlier in my blog. These things really did make me feel like an outcast and that I didn’t belong. I wondered for years what was wrong with ME because no one else seemed to have these problems or struggles. Indeed I felt like no one understood me in general (and still feel that way for the most part), but in the church I felt even more misunderstood.

All of that being said I do want to point out some characteristics of the LDS church that were really close to my heart:

Charity: The Book of Mormon has a whole chapter dedicated to this topic just as 1 Corinthians 13 is one of my favorites. Jesus taught to love everyone even the sinner. Jesus indeed (if the man existed and really was the savior of the world) truly loved us all. It’s a touching story fiction or not. I still get emotional thinking about it just because of the emotion in the story itself. Honestly I loved that some people in the church were all about the whole “love everyone and everything”. The idea that love is the key to happiness and salvation is a really appealing idea to me, and I still believe that is true. No one should need religion to expand their capacity to love.

The Circle of Life: Mormonism gave me meaning in my life. This life had a purpose and was just a small step in my eternal progression to becoming like God. Most people find that absurd that someone could believe that they will eventually become a God, but growing up in it seemed to make perfect sense. We somehow all existed as “intelligences” (whatever that means), and God made us into spirits. He then made the earth for us to gain a mortal body and test our faith. After we die we resurrect and if we were righteous will continue to progress until we become Gods of our own worlds just like him. Having purpose in my life really gave me focus in my life.

Apology Accepted: I know that Mormon apologists really do stretch quite a bit. But in their defense at least they try. I really like Mormon doctrine in that they seemed to make a little more sense than the rest of Christianity. I’m not saying that they DO make more sense, but growing up I felt their arguments were better held together (this is coming from a biased viewpoint I understand that). Point being I felt that if the Mormon church wasn’t true, how could anything else be true because it really did seem to make the MOST sense (I still had trouble understanding a lot of contradictions within the doctrine).

Family Focus: Yes the LDS church is strongly against same-sex marriage. I actually defend their right as a religion to teach it, but don’t agree with their political involvement (I had a rant earlier on my blog about it). One thing I do like though is what the church TEACHES (I emphasize the teach because there are a lot of LDS families that are definitely dysfunctional) a focus on successful happy families. This to me once again really resonated with my value system of raising kids in a happy loving home. It made it easier to feel at peace knowing I could find a spouse very easily within the church with the same family value system as me.

Emotions: This has two sides to it for me. First the church teaches that an answer to prayer comes from strong emotional feelings, and that those feelings are the “spirit” talking to you. I had many instances where I felt “the spirit” and that made the religion true because obviously God was talking to me. This ended up backfiring however when I felt strong feelings about the church not being true later in life. The other part is that it gave me something to defend. I was emotionally involved with it, and it was my value system. I was truly willing to die for the cause, and would have defended my beliefs no matter the ridicule if I felt it was threatened. When you have a cause as an INFJ it’s very difficult to give it up.

Service: The LDS church has a strong emphasis on serving others. I love that about the church because it gave me opportunities to serve without having to look very hard. I did not like that it focused around serving other members of the church as a priority, but still I enjoyed helping others however I could

Social Opportunities: As an introvert it’s difficult to make social connections with people. I don’t like having to deal with other people without some sort of connection or purpose. I can be friendly and cordial but that doesn’t mean I like what I refer to as “shallow” social interactions. The church gave me a way to meet people and have social interaction with some kind of purpose. Although most people at church drove me nuts and I had a strong distaste for them and their social games I made a few friends as well.

There are many other reasons (I’m sure) that the LDS church was close to my heart. It was my entire way of life. Everything revolved around an eternal purpose. My value system was upheld by my religion. I had something that I could look forward to my entire life, which was returning to my father in heaven.

My whole story is covered on the first post of my blog. But I wanted to go into some of the more difficult aspects of what it’s like to truly feel lost after losing your religion. I have mentioned both why the church meshed with my personality and also why it was a huge turn off for me. This caused me to truly go through self reflection and try to understand if this truly was a cause worth fighting for. I have heard from many people within the LDS church talk about those who leave the church (and I would guess many people have said the same about me) that it is because it’s the “easy way out”. It was definitely not easy, in fact it was one of the hardest things I have done and have to live with in my life. Looking back now and understanding who I am I realize more why it was so difficult, but also how I was able to do it.

Loss of Meaning in Life: If I accepted that the LDS faith was not the truth, then I also accepted that I had lost the meaning of life that I had currently. This actually sparked from studying science and realizing that science has more holes than most people know about. If science had holes, couldn’t religion as well. I had to reanalyze the whole purpose and meaning to life. That was very difficult. To this day I don’t think I have an answer, but my new meaning in life is trying to find meaning in it. Instead of being focused around my salvation and that of my family, I am now focused on humankind as a whole. I am always trying to figure out how my life can affect others positively. I am willing to stand up for anyone that is being persecuted, not just the religious. I don’t know if there will be an afterlife and that was very depressing to me for a long time. I’ve learned to accept it, and whether there is or not I would like to make an impact on this life without regards to the life hereafter.

Social Struggles: This is something that continues to be a problem in my life. I hate conflict and hate offending others. I feel very strongly about leaving the church being a good thing in my life, but at the same time I don’t want others to feel hurt about my loss of testimony. I still have good friends who are LDS, and my family is still very strong in the church. I have a conflict inside of me when family discussions revolve around religious principles because I of course want to stand up for my new value system, but do not want to attack that of my familiy’s. It sounds silly (and probably arrogant to some) but I don’t want my loss of testimony to affect other’s feelings about the church. I do want people to come to understand my point of view and what I feel is “free their minds” from the bondage of religious thought, but at the same time I respect so much their strong beliefs. I have a connection to them because I understand them and where they are coming from. I feel helpless and defenseless though because it’s difficult for any of them to understand me. Anything I say to explain my point of view can be seen as an attack on their faith and so I am left to hold my tongue. Perhaps that’s why I started this blog as an outlet to try and express my feelings.

Loss of Ideals: This is something that made it difficult and easy to part from my past. It was probably the most difficult thing for me to accept that my religion was not true (I avoid using the term false, because I look at a lack of truth rather than apparent falsity). Leaving something you loved your whole life is difficult. I struggled many nights trying to find an excuse to find parts of it true, and parts of it false. For a long time I felt that Mormonism was part of the path God had for me, and though it wasn’t the truth it was the beginning of the journey that I needed. I’m not sure at of if God has a path for me or if he even exists, but I have comfort knowing and accepting my past as part of who I am. It opened my eyes and helped me to gain a better understanding of life. Leaving religion is truly depressing but eye opening, and can really expand your viewpoint and understanding of other people. I kind of treat the LDS church like a relationship and one personality site explains my feeling perfectly. As reffering to INFJ relationship it states: ”Are able to move on after a relationship is over (once they’re sure it’s over)”. Once I knew I didn’t believe it anymore I was able to move on quickly with my thoughts about life. I developed a new value system. My new value system is based on open mindedness and seeking understanding and truth. I don’t ever expect to find the “truth” but I enjoy the journey. I love learning about other religions, and why people believe what they believe. I’ve developed a new tolerance for people of all walks of life and attitudes. I may not agree with many people, but I’ve learned to try to understand where they are coming from. I have also discovered that my ideals did not come from the LDS church. They came from my loving parents and myself. I have learned that my love for others, my determination to serve, and my respect for others are things that my parents taught me. They’re qualities that I love developing, and although the church provided ways in which to develop them, it was not the cause FOR developing them. I wish that was true for all people, but since it’s not I guess I am grateful for churches.

There were many other struggles I had internally when parting with religion. I still have to deal with the side effects of it. Sometimes I really wish I would have just been born into a family without Mormonism, but that is a depressing thought because I would not give up my family for anything. I also have a few close friends that would make going through it all worth it just for their company. I have two close friends from my missionary work that I would be willing to suffer through the whole two years again even if it was just for the chance to meet them and gain their friendship. I would never wish my bad experiences on anyone else, but I wish I could give everyone the understanding that I have received through them. Sometimes it pains me to know the only way for someone to understand me is to go through the same struggles I have gone through. I wish it was easier, but few good things come easy.

In closing I just want to say for those others out there who think you are misunderstood and alone: you are not alone. You may be misunderstood, but I promise you there are others like you. Find strength in the fact that of all the billions of people in the world, someone else has gone through something similar and hopefully you can find them. If you believe in a God, the God that I believed in and still hope for is one that understands all of us individually. He would know why we do what we do, and doesn’t care so much about rigid commandments but more about our individual successes and how we contribute to the success of others. As always I will end with some really emotional fluff in that I hope we can all just learn to love each other, and accept others for who they are. We may not understand sometimes, but the least we can do is love and sympathize.

Is the cat dead or alive: no one cares...

I recently saw this article posted on the physics subreddit, and it annoyed me. It didn’t annoy me because it had some misleading comments and some things that were just blatantly wrong. It annoyed me because people don’t try to learn things from proper sources, and they just let the mainstream media give them the information they think they need. I could go off on a side tangent about this, but I won’t go too far off topic. I just want to point out that if the mainstream media can get science topics so wrong, who’s to say they aren’t getting their other information wrong. I don’t watch the news anymore because I don’t trust news media (NBC/NPR/ABC/CNN/FOX) with my precious time and brain cells. Please don’t take everything you hear/see/read from media sources as credible until you fact check the fact checkers. Especially science Fridays on NPR, I usually get pretty upset with the way they explain a lot of things. Rant over.

So since a lot of people are very curious about the subject, I thought I would write a short explanation of quantum mechanics (I’ll refer to it as QM to save time typing) that hopefully even the lay person could understand. I know that this is not a good explanation for non-science people, but I just want to get the main point across that quantum mechanics just happens and no one knows why.

In order to properly understand the history and premise of QM, one must first understand what science is. Science according to google is: the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment. That’s a really condensed definition. This basically means that science is a methodology. Scientists perform experiments and make observations. These are either experiments due to a proposed idea, or sometimes just observations out of curiosity. Based on the results of the experiment or data from observations, scientists develop a model for the behavior of the system. We find patterns, and attempt to explain those patterns with a hypothesis/theory/whatever you want to call it. Once we have the model for our system, other scientists will then perform experiments in an attempt to disprove and/or replicate the results of others. If the model cannot be disproved it is published, and then peer reviewed by other objective scientists. When the model is resilient enough to withstand the intense scrutiny of experiments and peer review it is then considered a law/theory/postulate/equation that describes nature. This is not to say however that we consider it to be truth, science does not look for truth like religion does. IN SCEINCE THERE IS NO ABSOLUTE TRUTH. There is only the best model we have come up with so far, and guaranteed we will find better models to describe nature in the future. This is a good lead in to how QM got started.

The history of quantum mechanics really starts in the mid 1600s with Isaac Newton. Newton was one of the first true modern scientists. He was one of the first thinkers to apply models to observed data. He was then able to show that his models were reproducible in the acceptable reference frame. Newton became the father of what is referred to as classical mechanics. This is usually the typical stuff you learn in an intro to physics class in high school or your freshman year of college. He came up with three ideas that were consistent and reproducible by anyone, which we now know as Newtons three laws of motion. I won’t go into the detail, but basically he came up with a model that described the world, and was able to predict outcomes of motion based on his mathematical models. Before Newton was a guy Johannes Kepler who had taken astronomical data and figured out a mathematical model to describe planetary motion. These are known as Kepler’s laws. When Newton came up with his laws of motion, Kepler’s laws fluidly were just a mathematical outcome of Newton’s laws for planets in orbit. Kepler wasn’t wrong; he just didn’t have the full model to describe things outside the scope of planetary motion. Newton was able to come up with a model that could be applied to any mass in motion.

There are many other scientists that come along the way after Newton that have a huge impact on science and its development. All of them had a significant impact on the field of science; I just don’t think most people want a history lesson on all of physics. I will skip now to the beginning of the 20^th century. By this time there had been experiments which showed that the speed of light is constant in all reference frames, which lead to the theory of special relativity. Special relativity just like QM is something that boggles the human mind. It’s something we don’t think is “intuitive”, well because it is not at all intuitive. We don’t travel at half the speed of light when driving to work so we can never just gain intuition on the subject. Instead scientists must remain completely objective when performing experiments and leave any personal bias out of their research. This is arguably why QM and relativity had such a slow start up, is because the older scientists of the day just had a hard time accepting theories that just “didn’t make sense”. Special relativity, however, has still yet to be disproven so it remains as the best model we have to describe such conditions as an electron traveling very fast through an accelerator.

More experiments were conducted in the late 1800s to early 1900s. These experiments gave rise to results not previously explained earlier models of classical mechanics. One such of these examples is the photoelectric effect. Hertz (a scientist in the late 19^th century) observed that light of a certain frequency (energy) is shined on a metal it will start to emit electrons. There is however a minimum amount of energy required in order to “free” this electron from the metal. This is behavior totally unexplained by any theory at the time, and is part of the reason why we call this new model quantum mechanics. It was observed that these electrons had a discrete energy that bound them to the metal, thus the quanta (meaning discrete energy) in quantum mechanics. Other experiments showed that electrons behave as light waves, and that light waves exhibited particle behavior (if you’re interested look up electron diffraction and Compton scattering on Wikipedia). That was crazy talk for the time, and if these were indeed reproducible experiments (which they were), then a new model would have to arise to describe them. Thus quantum mechanics was born.

Quantum mechanics (just like Newton’s laws of motion) are predicated on some fundamental postulates. These postulates CANNOT BE DERIVED as they are first principles of QM. In other words, we observe these things happening, so we model the system based on this set of rules. Some people say that there are four postulates (postulate means thesis, theory, or idea), others say six, and some say anything in between. I will give what’s referred to as the Copenhagen interpretation as it is the most widely accepted point of view among physicists. If you wish to know more look up the Copenhagen interpretation on Wikipedia. I will attempt to restate the 6 principles that Wikipedia refers to in words that are easier to understand.

1.       A system can be described by a wave function which describes the state of the system. This wave function develops in time just like a wave does in acoustics, in the ocean, or any other type of wave. This wave isn’t a physical wave however. It merely describes the system (which could be a particle or several particles). When we take a measurement, however, it gives some kind of information about the system. Since our way of measurement says for example “is the particle here?” we then know where the particle is. In other words, this wave function which gives information about the state of the particle “collapses”. This is to say we took a measurement, and now we know the state of the particle, this happens because of the inherent way in which we measure a system. IE: A system is described by a wave function, until we measure the system. This gives us information about the system, so it is no longer described as a wave.

2.       We describe nature through probabilities. This probability is given by the square modulus of the wave function. I won’t go into the mathy details, but this essentially says we don’t describe things happening in absolutes, but we describe nature in terms of probability of something occurring. A good example of this is nuclear decay; an unstable isotope has some probability of decaying each second. This is why some isotopes are more unstable then others, it is because their probability of decay is higher.

3.       Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle is familiar to most people. It is not inherently a postulate per-say, but really it is a bi-product of the math that comes from the other postulates of QM. It says that systems information cannot be known perfect. Most people understand this to mean that a particles position and momentum cannot be known at the same time. This is a bit of an oversimplification. The certainty of our knowledge of some systems momentum is sacrificed with the certainty of knowledge about the systems position. In other words if I kind of know where I am, I can kind of know which way and how fast I’m going. If I know exactly where I am, I can’t know at all where I’m going. Like I say, this comes out of the math from the other postulates, but it also applies to things like energy and time. This is why a vacuum is not actually empty, it has an infinite amount of particles popping in with some energy, and they just have to disappear within a certain amount of time (this is what's referred to as the "quantum foam"). Weird stuff I know.

4.       The wave-particle duality basically just states that anything can be viewed as either a wave or a particle. This is why photons scatter off of electrons elastically, which one wouldn’t predict in classical mechanics. Don’t over think, just accept it and be in awe of the mystery. This is just how the model describes nature, and there is really no underlying derivation to any of these postulates.

5.       The tools we have to measure things are classical instruments. We are limited in what we can measure, because we live in the classical limits of really big stuff. There are properties of matter like spin for example. We don’t really know what spin is, it’s just a property of particles. We can’t directly measure the spin of an electron, since we don’t have quantum mechanical devices. Instead we have to use a property of spin, which is a magnetic moment. This magnetic moment aligns with the direction of the spin of the particle, and so if we shoot an electron through a magnet we can measure the spin by the direction the electron bends towards (for more info on this example look up the Stern-Gerlach experiment).

6.       Classical mechanics is an approximation of QM on a really big scale. If you take average quantum probabilities of Trillions of particles in a system (say a block of aluminum) the math gives you classical mechanics. This is known as the Ehrenfest theorem. This means that Newton was right, because we was observing exactly what happens on a large scale. QM doesn’t necessarily TRUMP classical mechanics; classical mechanics is merely QM on a large scale approximation. Don’t think we’ve forgotten about Newton’s laws of motion because we found the Higg’s boson, if we did then humans would have never reached the moon.

Hopefully this gives a little bit of an overview of the principles of QM. These basic principles give rise to some phenomena that seems impossible (and indeed are) in classical mechanics, but that happen frequently in QM. In fact they are used in our daily lives. I will give some examples, and how we take advantage of the science contained in these phenomena.

·         Tunneling

Tunneling is the phenomena of a particle going through what we could view as in classical mechanics as a brick wall. In classical mechanics we don’t deal in probabilities, we deal in absolutes. In QM the probability of being outside a boundary is a finite possibility. An example of this is alpha decay. One can view an unstable (for example Uranium-235) nucleus as having a free alpha particle trapped inside a well. It is trapped because there is a force called the nuclear strong force that is attractive between nucleons. Although this alpha is trapped inside this nucleus, it has a probability of existing outside this nuclear potential barrier. If at some point the particle finds itself outside the nucleus its positive charge repels the positively charged nucleus, and it flies away. Quantum tunneling is used in all modern electronic devices. It is the reason that diodes and transistors work. Without quantum mechanics, we would not have computers today.

·         Quantization of energy

Quantum mechanics explains the discrete property of nature. Energy in nature is quantized; each state a particle is in refers to a certain discrete energy value. This is how we can know things in chemistry so well. Remember the periodic table? Well the entire thing is predicated on principles of quantum mechanics. The ionization energy of a certain atom has a discrete value associated with the energy state of an electron bound to the nucleus. Quantization of energy is the reason why our different molecules in our eyes are able to see different colors associated with different light wave energies. It is why colorblind people like me can’t see certain colors, because we are missing molecules that can view those energies of light. This is why purple lasers are purple, green lasers are green, why CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and why a microwave or a cell phone cannot physically cause cancer. These are all topics that are much more complicated than me just stating them, but the underlying principles of chemistry, climate change, and the like are all rooted in our quantum mechanical model.

·         Pauli exclusion principle

The Pauli Exclusion Principle states that no two fermions can occupy the same quantum state. Fermions are just a class of particles with ½ integer spin. Spin has nothing to do with spinning or rotation, so just view spin as a strange number that has some weird properties to it. Examples of fermions are electrons, protons, and neutrons. Because no two fermions can occupy the same quantum state, this gives rise to the way that orbitals are filled up in an atom. If electrons weren’t fermions, then all electrons bound to a nucleus would be in a 1s state. This does not apply to particles known as bosons. Photons (electromagnetic waves) are bosons, which means that they can essentially stack up on top of each other. That’s what a laser essentially is: a whole bunch of photons of the same energy all stacked up on top of each other.

There is a whole list of fantastically fascinating phenomena that occur, which we never understood until we came up with our model of QM. Who knows, maybe in fifty years we’ll come up with an even better model to understand how general relativity and QM can relate to each other. QM is not an absolute truth, just as Newton’s laws are not absolute truth. They are models that help us to understand the universe around us. We as scientists are not trying to find what people in religion refer to as truth. All we want to know is how the universe works, and we get that through experiments and observations. Arguably science will never find truth, just the best model of nature humans can find.

Why How and not Why

                As a human species we tend to have an explosive curiosity for the world around us. I feel it is what makes us unique, and probably is what makes humans the dominant species. I was in the store the other day and I overheard someone else’s child making the inquiring “why” repeatedly. I have to admit I often ask the question why in my own life, it’s what drove me to study science. However, it’s the obsession with the “why” that also causes us to sometimes think irrationally. There are absolute truths in the universe, but what makes something true? Often times we have our minds set so much on the “why” that we miss the entire “what” and “how”. I feel the one absolute truth (no matter what you believe) is that we have no idea what absolute truth and knowledge is.

                I have always studied science to get answers to why things are the way they are. It wasn’t until my last year of undergraduate that I realized that science doesn’t have the answer why (I know that took a long time, but I always thought I just needed to learn more). That caused a deep sense of depression, heartache, and confusion inside of me. The truth is science doesn’t teach “why”, instead scientists answer the question “how”. The laws of physics are defined not because Newton said “that’s why gravity pulls on things”, but because he observed a pattern of things falling due to some imaginary force. What is gravity, why does it exist? Those are two questions scientists don’t know, and only one of them they are trying to answer.

                I feel the problem lies in the false perception we are given as children. Often times people talk about something we call “intuition”. What is intuition? Google says it is “the ability to understand something immediately, without the need to conscious reasoning”.  So when we say science is intuitive, it is because science is just how the universe works. Of course it’s intuitive, it’s because we see it every day of our lives. Few people stop to think the reason we aren’t floating is because of gravity, they just intuitively know that gravity is working and always has. What bothers me is that we give a false impression that science and intuition go together. THIS IS WRONG. Why is quantum mechanics so difficult for people to comprehend? It is because you can’t use intuition unless you are an experimental physicist or physical chemist.

                I finally started piecing the puzzle together after my first year of graduate school. Nothing “makes sense” in physics, it isn’t meant to. Physics answers the question of how things work, and can be used to predict future events based on initial conditions. Quantum physics is the same thing as classical physics experimentation wise. Basically we do a bunch of experiments, and get certain results. The only difference between classical physics and quantum physics: the results. On a smaller scale we get new results, thus we are forced into creating new models for our system. However this does not mean that Newton was wrong, or that Einstein Dirac or Heisenberg was wrong. All this means is that quantum mechanics is a model that works on a smaller scale than classical mechanics. As my graduate quantum mechanics professor put it so elegantly “an electron does what an electron does, and it doesn’t give a damn what you think.” In other words things happen no matter the human reasoning behind it.

                This is why I like to talk about how humans don’t know what absolute truths are out there. Science is a continually evolving field because our experiments get better, and we can build off of old models. We are continually learning “new” “truths”, and sometimes throwing out old “truths”. Our experiments can show how things work, but if we knew the “why” then science would be dead. The why is a by all end all, and really an impossible question to answer. “Why” leads to circular logic and will never be truly answered. So why the obsession with “why” is a question I don’t know the answer to. After all it’s a “why” question. It could be just a genetic trait built into humans, perhaps it’s an evolutionary step to make us the critical thinking tool builders that we are today. It obviously has some benefit since it’s built into us at birth. I do feel, however, it can be the cause of our logical downfall if we are too OCD about it.

                Perhaps this is the cause of religion in the world. If you are religious please don’t be offended by my language here. I fully admit I do not have the answers, and perhaps there is a God or gods or flying spaghetti monster. With that logic, however, I also will tell you that you have no proof of a God or gods or flying spaghetti monster. This is exactly the topic that I would like to discuss.

                Often people try to “prove” religion or philosophy. To be blunt that is probably one of the most ignorant things you can do. I would say proving religion is more ignorant that just believing it based on words (at least that kind of belief has some merit). The reason I say this is that science and religion are two different things (not belief systems, but THINGS). Some atheists say they “believe science more than religion” which is just as ignorant as trying to “prove religion”. Science is not a belief system but it is a method in which we find answers to the “how” in the universe. We evoke the scientific method, perform experiments and then peer review our results and try to replicate them. In other words science is the method used to obtain the answer “how” while ignoring the why. Religion on the other hand answers a completely different question. Religion is the philosophy of “why” without explaining the how. For example, those who take the bible literally will tell you God created the earth in 6 days. That answers the question “why do we exist” but it does not answer how he created the earth or the life on it. Science however does not care about “why do we exist” but it merely states that the earth was formed through the force of gravity, and over millions of years through the process of evolution life evolved into what it is today. To recap SCIENCE TELLS US HOW WITHOUT THE WHYS, and RELIGION TELLS US WHY WITHOUT THE HOWS. This is why many scientists tend to be atheists, not because science is a belief system but because as scientists they really don’t care about the whys (especially if the answer to how is just merely “because God”).

                I hope this can shed some light on our distorted world view. I think this also explains the difference between science and religion/philosophy. Scientists (at least experimentalists) are not philosophers. We find patterns, and express those patterns in mathematical theories. Philosophers answer questions that often times have no application in life, and they have no proof to their answers. Philosophy is the art of using words to reason things. Science is the method of reasoning  through experiments and patterns. So how do to we deal with this constant nuisance of needing to know things that we can’t know? May I suggest it starts with our children and explaining to them the mysteries of the universe in a blatant but straight forward manner? Here are my top 3 ways to cope with curiosity:

1.       Accept the fact you don’t know and can’t know “why”. Teach your children that there are limits to human knowledge. When they ask why, explain the how. If you don’t know the how it is fun to explore and learn together. Thankfully the internet has the answers to most of the “how” questions. Then lovingly help them understand that no one knows why. It is something they probably won’t get until they are much older, but it will be easier to cope with the horrible reality of life if they are exposed to it at a young age. If they know that scientific laws and theories just exist and we don’t know why it will make quantum mechanics much easier to understand. If you are religious, accept the fact that your religion does not have the answers to “how”. You just need to “take it on faith”, that’s really the nature of religion. If that bothers you than maybe religion just isn’t for you. If you’re ok with that, then keep doing what you’re doing if it makes you happy and gives you comfort in life.

2.       Accept the fact that you are just a spec of dust in the universe. The other day I was looking out at the stars and I thought about how weird we are as a human species. We make things like light bulbs and cars and highway signs out of just raw materials in the earth. Then it made me realize that one human couldn’t do any of what human kind has done by him/herself. We are who we are because we work collectively. However if you are just a small person in the human race, imagine how insignificant you are in the universe. This is humbling/depressing/liberating all at once. If we accept that we are but a small pixel in a large painting it gives us a new perspective on life and existence. It can then perhaps help us to understand the beauty of the universe.

3.       Accept the fact that you have no control over anything/anyone but yourself. I say this not because it’s absolutely true. You of course can kick up dust, influence people (for good or for bad), crash your car into a house, etc… But what you think/believe will not change the absolute truths of nature or the universe. We often think we can will people or things into doing what we want. Wouldn’t it be amazing to have “the force” and move objects with our minds or use “jedi mind tricks”. Sure that would be great for us, but it’s just a fantasy. We need to accept that and move on with our lives. The less we try to control things/people and the more we try to work WITH things/people we will be a lot more productive. Just because you think/believe/”know” it’s true doesn’t make it true. Science can prove patterns however and can predict future events. So use science to predict the proper path to take in life. Don’t force your “why” answers on other people, but try to understand “how” you can understand them better.

I feel all of these suggestions build upon each other, and can make for coping with life a little easier. Life is hard; it’s even harder when you don’t know “why”. These suggestions may not be the best for you. I don’t claim to know how to best help you cope with the lack of answers in the world. Maybe you don’t need to cope at all and are doing just fine. But as a scientist these are the patterns I observe in my life that make it a bit easier. May we all be just a little more curious, and find the answers we can find without going crazy over the answers we can’t find.

democracy is hypocrisy

Hypocrite: a person who puts on a false appearance of virtue or religion or a person who acts in contradiction to his or her stated beliefs or feelings. I think a better definition would in fact be a human being. We are all hypocrites to some extent, some more than others. I fully admit to my own hypocrisy. I think that the government should have little or no say in my personal life, basically I’m a libertarian. I however am upset when the government does nothing to prevent oil companies and large corporations from exploiting their monopoly on the market. Religiously “right conservatives” are very anti government welfare because they want the government to stay out of their wallets. But yet they are extremely liberal in the sense that they want the government to stay deeply involved in people’s bedrooms trying to stop gay marriage and abortion. The same could be said about those who say government should have a bigger say in society, and that it’s the government’s role to make sure the “ethical” thing happens with the treatment of the poor. However the government should not have grounds to say that gay marriage is in fact immoral. I know a lot of people who deep down inside believe in marriage equality (I guess that’s what they're calling it), but their religion is very against it so they side with their religious beliefs as so to not go to hell. Let’s take the religion I grew up in for instance Mormonism. Mormonism a while back practiced polygamy and the ONLY REASON (I bold this because it’s actually written in cannon by the prophet who stopped the practice that this is the reason) is because the government was intolerant of the practice. Now the church has an official statement about the recent DOMA decision as follows: “Regardless of the court decision, the Church remains irrevocably committed to strengthening traditional marriage between a man and a woman, which for thousands of years has proven to be the best environment for nurturing children.” I’m pretty sure within the last thousand years the church practiced a non-traditional marriage between a man and women, and they seem to think that that is the way a celestial system works. So why are they trying to take away those who are untraditional trying to get gay married rights’ when they so complained about society's intolerance of their own self defined untraditional marriages between a man and women. I feel that if you are intolerant of gay marriage, you have no right to say that the early Mormon pioneers were “persecuted because of their faith.” Perhaps early Mormons were persecuted because they were in fact immoral people, and were destined for hell (that’s what I’m sure a lot of the early persecutors saw those early Mormons as). Now I’m not trying to say that polygamy is bad, nor am I trying to say that homosexuality is bad. In fact shocking I know, but I’m OK with BOTH. Why should I care if they are all consenting adults that are happy with what they are doing? I shouldn’t, and neither should the government. Those are my actual views, and I’ve decided to stick with them. Sorry to go off on this subject, but I’ve had a lot brewing in me for a long time. Anyways, so back to how we are all hypocrites. I once served a mission for the LDS (mormon) church and I was pushed to make sure that I had so many “progressing investigators”. In other words I had to have a certain number of people that were getting ready to be baptized. So instead of being sensitive to peoples beliefs and lifestyles, their personal backgrounds, and their own personal feelings I taught them that the only way to be with their family forever and to have the happiest life in the hereafter is to be baptized and follow a ton of commandments. My personality is very against doing something like that, I like to be open minded, and I like others to respect that. I don’t like to be forced to commit myself to something I hardly know anything about. I, however, shoved by beliefs that I thought “I knew with a surety” down other people’s throats because I am in fact a hypocrite. What drove me to do it?: a mix between peer pressure, a childhood of believing that’s what “righteous” missionaries did, and a slight personal conflict between believing in my church and believing in my gut instincts. This is not the only thing I’m a hypocrite about. I don’t believe in the government taking my money away, just to give to other people, but every tax season I get a big fat check from the IRS giving me sometimes more money than what I paid the federal government (I am in the lowest tax bracket and get student tax benefits as well). You never hear me complain about that, but I should, it’s against my own principles. I hate it when roommates leave their dishes in the sink, but I’m guilty of the same thing all the time. I try and give examples from my own life, because no one ever really looks at themselves if someone is attacking what they do. They tend to get defensive. But when someone says “hey I’m doing this wrong, but I’m trying to change to be better” most people react positively with the same type of self-reflection. So I just want to say, we are all hypocrites. I don’t feel it’s innately bad, we all have acne some worse than others. Can’t really help the fact we have it, but we can take showers and eat a healthy diet to avoid it. In the same way we can try to be a lot more aware of ourselves and our personal world view. If you believe something stick to it, no matter what religion, your parents, or society tells you. However understand that other people also believe things, and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it. If you are truly sincere and honest about your beliefs and are understanding of others, I’m sure they’ll show the same courtesy. If not they are just ignorant bigots, and didn’t deserve to hear your thoughts in the first place ;). I sincerely hope that we can all (including myself) have more self-reflection and discover our own beliefs. Also I hope that we can accept that others have their flaws and have patience with them. If we can all at least accept that we are all hypocrites I feel that’s the first step to recovery.