Now that the pejorative title has attracted you perhaps because you think atheism is wrong from a religious perspective or maybe you’re an atheist expecting some religion-based diatribe on the evils of atheism, I’ll ask you to read on because this statement comes from neither perspective.

The first draft of this entry had an extensive first-person narrative of a recent event that seemed to be the catalyst for this entry. Suffice to say, I’ll record it at some point but I’ll summarize by saying it was an instance of aggressive panhandling for jesus. This event sparked an emotional response from me that I was unprepared for when being damned to hell by the panhandler when he asked if I was “saved.” Normally, I would have replied atheist. But in a flash of, perhaps, insight? It occurred to me that while being an atheist (one who does not believe in god) is completely valid, a notion of atheism is not the answer.

Here’s the reasoning behind that statement. Do you believe in the Tooth Fairy? How about the boogeyman? Unicorns? Compassionate Conservatism? (couldn’t resist, sorry) Dragons? The Great Pumpkin? Or, the piece de resistance, Santa Claus? Chances are, if you’re reading this, you don’t believe any of these myths, though they are pervasive in our societies and perfectly normal to really, deeply believe as children. At some point, it becomes clear to children that the wool is being pulled over their eyes and the belief stops. When children come to this conclusion, are they penalized for the discovery? To the children than ban together to form clubs of anti-Santa-ism? Are the anti-Santa-ites individually? Of course not, they’ve simply grown up and recognized the reality of the situation.

That’s because it is simply rational to not believe the myths when sufficient observable evidence appears to make a judgment. As humans, we work under this assumption in virtually every aspect of our lives except one, religion. To be fair, most people simply have no chance. They’re indoctrinated into a particular sect of a particular religion at birth and are so steeped in the myth and so consistently and constantly reminded of the validity of the myth it never occurs to question what’s happening until much later in life. In fact, this practice is brainwashing and it’s an abhorrent practice that is akin to child abuse, but that’s another entry.

Getting back to the thesis at hand, the notion that there is an “atheism” is like establishing the “anti-flat-earth society” – it doesn’t make sense. There is no national movement, there is no membership, there are no dues, and there is no hierarchy. I believe we would advance rational thought as a practice simply by treating religion like any other myth. The antidote for belief is rational thought made on the basis of observation, hypothesis, and testing.

The intent of this entry is not to convert people of myth, that’s ultimately up to them as individuals. This is more to convert people of thought to ditch the label atheism and simply revert to rational thought as the distinction between themselves and people of myths. After all, when there is a label it makes it easier to lump people into a category and spread false information about them. How many of you believe Hitler was an atheist after all? I bet many do because that’s what you were taught. He was a staunch Catholic and his secret police, the SS, had “god with us” as a patch sewn into their uniforms.

The punch line to this entry? Debunk any myth you like and believe what you like. But if you happen to fall into the side of the argument that says there is no god, you might think twice about saying you’re an atheist because it’s simply another “church” so to speak and will ultimately be treated that way. It’s fine to not believe, but it’s much more effective to be for something, like “rational thought” than against something, like gods and churches.

In closing this morning’s sermon, I leave you with a cartoon from the book of humor:

Cartoon Credit: Don Addis via Friendly Atheist

President Bush on Monday defended U.S. interrogation practices and called the treatment of terrorism suspects lawful. “We do not torture,” Bush declared in response to reports of secret CIA prisons overseas.

Here’s the source.

And unless you’ve been living in a self-imposed media blackout, you know of the recent revelations that, in fact, we do torture.

The CIA used a widely condemned interrogation technique known as waterboarding on three suspects captured after the September 11 attacks, CIA Director Michael Hayden told Congress on Tuesday.

“Waterboarding has been used on only three detainees,” Hayden told the Senate Intelligence Committee. It was the first time a U.S. official publicly specified the number of people subjected to waterboarding and named them.

Here’s the source.

And then in recent Senate hearings, the legal advisor for the military claims he is “unequipped” to answer a hypothetical question about water boarding. You’ll have to watch it yourself to get the full flavor, it’s short at just over 1 minute.

There seems to be some confusion in the Bush Administration about what constitutes torture and when the borderline behavior is acceptable. To them, I propose this: If there’s a question about the relative nature of a practice being deemed torture, the people who are charged with making the call should be subjected to the practice firsthand. Since many of them are eye-for-an-eye christians anyway, this would be appropriate behavior.

In the meantime, I say to the humans who inhabit this country who are still capable of rational and independent thought, let’s not reprise this for four more years.

People are making all sorts of claims about energy efficient lighting, I’m one of them, having systematically inventoried, evaluated, and replaced incandescent lighting with compact fluorescent lamps in June, 2007. In fact, one of the most popular entries ever to appear in this blog was titled “Want to get $3,500?” which talks about the inventory, method, and expected savings of replacing standard lighting with energy efficient lighting. With seven months of data available, I thought it was time to check expectations with reality.

Here are the headlines:

• Total kwH saved: 920
• Total $ saved (electricity bill): $299.18
• Total lightbulb burnout replacement $ avoided: $42.00
• Equivalent tree impact: 48 trees planted

In seven months, we’ve recovered the “real $” investment in replacement lamps just with the savings in the monthly utility bill and lack of bulb replacement from burn outs. It was a great theory in June, it’s even better seeing it in reality in February. The chart below shows the actual electricity consumption change over time. I’ve got data from January of 2006 (so a full year of incandescent bulbs) and the first 6 months of 2007. The bulbs were replaced in the third week of June, 2007.

Now kwH reduction is interesting, but absolute cost reduction is king. I mean, sure, we all want to to things that help the planet, but when you can combine that with a real measurable economic impact, that’s even better! The actual electricity charges are listed below for the same time period. You might notice that September was a funky month, it’s due to a large-scale data storage test I was conducting here at the house and it almost ate the entire months savings, yikes. You can affect these numbers with activities like that.



One important thing to note about the cost savings on the monthly electrical bill, PG&E penalizes consumers rather stiffly for what it considers to be excessive use of power. Meaning the rates graduate from the base consumption of around $0.11/kwH to $0.32/kwH as the top tier rate. The lighting change is displacing kwH charged at the higher rate in our case, so if you choose to do this, make sure you understand how much you’re paying per kwH because it will affect your results.

Three other items of note: before the CFL bulbs, I was replacing about 1.5 incandescent lightbulbs per month (~$4 cost for the bulbs that would blow) – I’ve had zero replacements thus far in the CFL era. We haven’t had a break or replace situation, so cleanup and recycling hasn’t become an issue yet, to me this is still harder than it needs to be as I’ve had to dig to find places that will accept these bulbs post-use. It’s important to handle them properly as there is a small amount of mercury in the bulbs (with over 80 installed, it’s still far less than the amount of mercury in old of the old, small thermometers to put the risk in perspective.)

Finally, we have had one adjustment with respect to lighting, the 20 second or so “warm up” period. When the bulb is switched on, it goes to about 70% of illumination. Within 20 seconds, it’s up to 100%. At first, this is a little disconcerting, but I don’t think we even notice any more. The quality of the light is equivalent or better than the incandescent bulbs – it’s warm and full spectrum (choose your CFL’s carefully, I prefer the Philips brand for light quality and warmth.)

Convinced to make the switch yet? If you do, please leave a comment to let us know how it went. More data is better.

Vulcan Geothermal company has put forth its vision for a “green gigawatt” by tapping into the rich geothermal resource of the Basin and Range province largely located in north and central Nevada. What makes this different than any other approach? They’ve done a great job of characterizing resources across the range with most likely outputs, not only of their portfolio of geothermal prospects, but across the region. They’ve also taken the time to include other renewable sources like wind and solar thermal when considering transmission upgrades.

We applaud the bold vision that Vulcan has articulated at the G3 Plan site and look forward to seeing this vision moved toward reality as the multitude of developers with prospects in this general area work to bring their respective plans to fruition. Note to the Vulcan staff, it would be a good idea to have your website work with industry standard browsers like Firefox, this Internet Explorer only stuff is bush league, your vision deserves an open access professional touch. It might be worth a small investment to make that so…

Mitt Romney has decided to leave the campaign trail after losing 2/3 of the Super Tuesday states and seeing John McCain vault into the position of front-runner. Thus the “I’m more conservative than you” discussion can end, because it’s clear that with Huckabee and McCain who has that crown. Good luck Mr. Romney, and next time, don’t market with foam ‘mitts’, it was cheesy and ineffective.

That leaves McCain, Huckabee, and Paul in on the Republican side and Obama, Clinton, and Gravel in on the Democratic side.