Global Warning By Paula Routly, Seven Days. Posted April 13, 2005

When cheap oil disappears, says James Howard Kunstler, so will life as we know it.

Social critic James Howard Kunstler has railed for years against the twin evils of bad urban design and suburban sprawl. Based in Saratoga Springs, the author of The Geography of Nowhere and Home from Nowhere warns that our beloved cars -- and the subdivided landscape they drive us to -- are leading American culture down a four-lane highway to destruction.

Kunstler's arguments have taken on new urgency in light of what scientists now agree is an impending, and permanent, global energy crisis. His new book, The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the 21st Century (Atlantic Monthly Press, due out in May), imagines life -- and jobs, housing, architecture and transportation -- without access to cheap oil. An excerpt appears in a recent issue of Rolling Stone.

Kunstler got a rock-star reception last week at Middlebury College, where he entertained a standing-room-only audience with provocative predications about where our unbridled consumption is likely to land us. An eloquent, funny speaker who is not afraid to use the f-word, Kunstler agreed to a follow-up email interview with Seven Days.

Paula Routly: You've long criticized the housing and transportation policies that drove people from the cities to suburbia after World War II. Now it turns out "Levittown" is not only ugly and soul-killing, but unsustainable. Explain your vision of the "Long Emergency."

James Howard Kunstler: We poured our national wealth into the construction of a living arrangement that has no future -- and the future is now here. The infrastructure of suburbia can be described as the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world. It was deficient and problematic as a human habitat even apart from the question of its sustainability. The way we live in America represents a tragic set of collective and individual choices we made at a particular point in history, the mid-to-late 20th century, when circumstances seemed to suggest there were no limits to our quest for comfort, convenience and leisure. These things turned out to be a poor basis for a value system and for an economy.

So life without oil equals the apocalypse?

Your word, not mine. I rather resent being labeled "apocalyptic." It demonstrates how poorly even journalists understand what we face, which is an epochal discontinuity in the conditions of daily life, not the end of the world. In fact, we don't even face a life without oil, at least not imminently. We face a life without cheap oil, which is a big difference. Specifically, we are heading into a period of social, political and economic turbulence, which will probably include a lot of hardship. That's not the end of the world. That's something that the human race has been through many times before. For instance, the Europeans of 1913 would never have conceived the degree of destruction and vicissitude visited upon their societies by two 20th-century world wars. We're equally blind and clueless about what we are facing.

Since the U.S. reached its peak oil production in 1970, what's happened in terms of geoeconomic power?

The U.S. controlled the oil industry and the markets from the late 1800s until 1970 because we could always pump more and goose up the global supply, moderating prices. We were also the world's leading consumers of oil, so we wanted low prices. After 1970, when U.S. production peaked, other people -- namely OPEC -- enjoyed the position as "swing producers." They controlled prices and markets, not us. They could always pump more, but we couldn't, because our total production was decreasing. The 1970s were therefore very turbulent economically and the U.S. suffered a lot. "Stagflation." Twenty-percent interest rates! High unemployment.

In the 1980s the world's last great oil discoveries, the North Sea and Alaska's North Slope, came into production softening oil prices. These substantial non-OPEC sources tended to take pricing power away from OPEC. The result was a temporary glut and a decade and a half of still-cheap oil. I regard that period as the final blow-off of the cheap-oil era.

Now, there is reason to believe that the OPEC countries, including Saudi Arabia, may have peaked much earlier than expected, and nobody seems to have pricing control anymore -- no country can open up the valves and increase the supply enough to goose down world prices. Also, the North Sea and Alaska bonanzas are now officially over. Both areas are technically in depletion. In the years 2003 and 2004, there were no significant discoveries of any new oil.

Scientists differ in opinion not on whether global oil production will peak and then fall, but when. Can you talk about this?

The difference of opinion has become nearly insignificant. Kenneth Deffeyes, the Princeton professor and former major oil company geologist, says 2005. Colin Campbell, who was chief geologist (now retired) for Shell, and the French company Total-Fina-Elf, says 2007. Some other guys say 2010. What matters is that the complex systems we depend upon -- especially world finance and the infrastructures of relative peace between nations -- will wobble in anticipation of the peak, and once that happens we're in deep shit.

Did we set up a "police station" in Iraq to put off or delay the inevitable?

That's a fair statement. Our primary mission in Iraq has been to stabilize the region of the world where most of the remaining oil reserves exist. How long this might be possible is hard to say. Secondarily our mission was to moderate the behavior of Iraq's neighbors, Iran and Saudi Arabia. The perceived benefit in all of this was to be able to continue to enjoy a reliable stream of oil imports -- from people who don't like us very much.

I hasten to add that we did not go there to "steal" the oil, as some people imply, but to simply continue to obtain it at market price. In any case, we won't be able to occupy unfriendly nations indefinitely, nor will supplies of Middle East oil last indefinitely. The level of violence will probably rise and fall and rise again. There is a tremendous capacity for political mischief in that part of the world. We may exhaust and bankrupt ourselves engaging with it. The inevitable part of this is that, sooner or later, we will have to come to grips with our extreme dependency on imported oil and the way we live in America.

Even the U.S. Department of Energy has released a report saying that "peak oil" is for real. So why doesn't the government support more initiatives for lessening dependence on fossil fuels?

This is hard for anyone to understand. I have personally not been a Bush-basher myself -- though I didn't vote for the sonofabitch. I tend to hold the American public as being complicit in the cluelessness that afflicts our society regarding the oil and gas issues and how they relate to our way of life. The dirty secret of the American economy for the last two decades is that it is all about the creation of suburban sprawl and accessorizing, furnishing and servicing it.

The public claims that this is what they want: the easy motoring life of the drive-in utopia. They also make a living off it. Subtract that and our economy is about little else besides medicine and hair-cutting. Consequently, our car dependency and oil addiction is a kind of economic racket, a self-reinforcing set of behaviors and habits that we dare not attempt to change -- because if we do, there will be no American economy.

Now, given all that it is still hard not to view the Bush leadership as extremely irresponsible or craven. There is no doubt that Bush and company understand the peak-oil issue and its implications for our economy and have chosen to not set the tone of a coherent national discussion about how we live. They have acted as enablers to a society that has tremendously self-destructive addictive habits. My own sense is that Bush and the Republican Party will be deeply discredited by their failure to confront the truth of our predicament until it was way too late. Unfortunately, the Democratic opposition has been, if anything, equally irresponsible and clueless. John Kerry said not a damn thing to really challenge the status quo.

The Germans and Brits are paying $5.50 a gallon and their societies are not collapsing. If they can handle $6 gas, why can't we?

The Europeans have very different ways of life and standards of living. They have cars but are not car-dependent, certainly not to the degree we are. They did not destroy their towns and cities. We did. They did not destroy their public transit. We did. They did not destroy local agriculture or the value-added activities associated with it. We did. If Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia got bumped off by a Wahabi maniac tomorrow and the West was put under a new oil embargo, the Europeans would still be able to get around. We would not.

You've been fairly pessimistic about "alternative" or "renewable" sources of energy, too. Is that because they're unfeasible, or that we can't get enough quickly enough?

I have been critical of these things. But mainly because the thinking about them has been so squishy and dumb. You've got Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute promoting what he calls a "hyper-car" for years and years, a car that gets super-great mileage -- say, 100 miles per gallon. Well, guess what the chief consequence of that stupid idea is: It promotes the belief that we can continue indefinitely being a car-dependant nation. Plus, it completely overlooks the tremendous damage that suburbia has done to our collective social lives, including the destruction of the public realm per se.

Mr. Lovins would have spent his time and money much more usefully on something like walkable communities, or being part of the New Urbanism movement. As a general rule, no combination of alt energy or systems to run it will allow us to continue running the U.S. as we have been running it. Virtually all of the bio-fuel schemes require more energy going in than they end up putting out. Hydrogen is essentially a hoax as it has been proposed. I believe the truth is that whatever so-called "renewables" we end up using will be at the extremely small, local scale -- perhaps the neighborhood or even household scale where solar is concerned.

In your remarks at Middlebury you predicted Bush won't finish out his second term because of the "Long Emergency" that's about to begin. Were you joking?

I refer you to my answer a few questions back. I believe that Bush and company will prove to have been so stupendously irresponsible in failing to prepare the public for the hardships we face, that it might be considered an impeachable offense. Yeah, I know Cheney is lurking in the background. He can be impeached too, and so can that fat, useless prick Dennis Hastert [Speaker of the House, R-IL].

In your book you talk about how declining oil reserves will change everything about how we live. What's the first crisis we'll see -- that is, other than oil-driven wars?

The oil markets will wobble well before oil becomes scarce. We're already seeing much more volatility in the price. The international financial markets will also prove to be extremely sensitive to the perception that all future industrial growth is at risk without expanding supply of oil and natural gas. The value of a currency -- say, the dollar -- depends on what people think the prospects are of the country that stands behind it.

People around the world will look at our futureless, suburban-sprawl way of life and the economy that goes with it, and they may conclude that America's prospects are not so hot. When that happens, the value of the dollar will tank. That will, of course, have a severe affect on the housing market and the sprawl-building industry. The conclusion is pretty self-evident, I think.

The domino effect of changes in our way of life is staggering to think about. One thing comes to mind is how our relatively recent reliance on computers and the internet will be affected. Despite the advent of wireless technologies, most of us still depend on electricity for access. Any thoughts on this?

We have reason to believe that the electric grid is headed for trouble. Our natural-gas supply situation is actually quite a bit more ominous and immediate than even the oil situation, and a lot of our electricity is made with natural gas. Suffice it to say that the internet is only as good as the electric grid that supports it.

What would cities look like under an oil-crisis scenario?

We'll discover that our largest industrial cities will not work very well in an energy-scarce economy. New York and Chicago pose particular problems because they are so overburdened with skyscrapers, a building type that will soon be obsolete. As a general rule, our industrial cities have assumed a scale that is just unsustainable, and I believe will see a period of painful contraction. Many of these cities are already well advanced in that process: Detroit, St. Louis, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, et cetera -- the list is very long.

Los Angeles has special problems insofar as it is composed mainly of suburban fabric. The giant suburban metroplexes will also generally enter a state of failure. Phoenix and Las Vegas will be faced by additional problems with their water supply. Both will be substantially depopulated, in my opinion. In Las Vegas, the excitement will be over. The action in America will be in the smaller towns that are embedded in a surrounding countryside where agriculture is viable.

So all cash-strapped farmers and land owners should just try to hang on a little longer ...

We can predict that life is going to become a lot more local, and that food production is going to occupy much more of the center of our economy. What we don't know is what kind of new social relations will form around land ownership. The Long Emergency, as I call this period ahead, will produce a lot of economic losers, people whose vocations are lost forever. Many of them will eventually find a place in food production, but exactly how that will shake out is a very interesting question. Will they sell their allegiance for food or physical security? That implies a kind of neo-feudalism. Will those who have land be subject to confiscations or assaults? During the disorders that accompanied the Black Plague in the 1300s, the countryside of Europe was beset by banditry. Will that happen in America? Hard to say.

What do these coming changes imply for education and employment? Where are the jobs going to be?

I doubt that our centralized schools with their yellow bus fleets will remain in operation many years from now. I imagine that whatever education there is will go not much beyond the equivalent of the eighth grade. I tend to think that many colleges will simply close up, especially the land-grant diploma mills. College, if it continues to exist at all, will once again be an elite activity, not a consumer activity.

As I said above, the Long Emergency will produce a lot of economic losers. Many types of jobs will cease to exist: public relations executive, marketing directors, et cetera. I think work will be very hands-on, and a lot of it will revolve around food production. We will, of course, have to completely reorganize our trade infrastructures, since Wal-Mart and its imitators will not survive the end of the cheap-oil era. The consumerist frenzy will be over. We will have far fewer things to buy.

You've envisioned the human reaction to the energy crisis will be a sociological clusterfuck. What can individuals do to prepare for the coming changes? Find a friend, a nice little spread out in the Green Mountains, a well, a windmill, some solar panels and the right seeds?

The most important thing, in my opinion, is to find a community proximate to viable agriculture -- namely, a town -- and to become a useful member of it. To prepare to be a good neighbor. Not everybody will have the skill or the strength to work in agriculture, and we will certainly need a wide variety of other things to be done. The rural idyll that many people entertain is a highly sentimental one, I'm sorry to say, based on our experience of recent years with cheap oil, easy automobile loans and plenty of electricity. There will be a much clearer distinction between rural and civic lives. In the Long Emergency, those who chose country living had better be prepared to lead rural lives.

Can you seriously foresee a path through the long emergency that will not involve violent social chaos? Will the suburbs be the new inner-city war zones?

I don't like the word chaos because it might tend to exaggerate what we actually face, which, in my opinion, is more properly described as turbulence, disorder, discontinuity and hardship. These things are bad enough, obviously, but they do not necessarily imply chaos and anarchy. I do believe that some places will be worse than other places. I think, for instance, that the Sunbelt will suffer in direct proportion to the degree that it prospered and benefited from the cheap-oil blowout of the past several decades.

Personally, I am a fairly cheerful person. The final question for anybody, whatever social and economic circumstances they find themselves in, is this: Am I leading a purposeful existence? I will be impertinent enough at this point to conclude by wishing us all good luck. We're going to need it.

Eating Fossil Fuels

Eating Fossil Fuels

by Dale Allen Pfeiffer

© Copyright 2004, From The Wilderness Publications, www.copvcia.com. All Rights Reserved. May be reprinted, distributed or posted on an Internet web site for non-profit purposes only.



[Some months ago, concerned by a Paris statement made by Professor Kenneth Deffeyes of Princeton regarding his concern about the impact of Peak Oil and Gas on fertilizer production, I tasked FTW's Contributing Editor for Energy, Dale Allen Pfeiffer to start looking into what natural gas shortages would do to fertilizer production costs. His investigation led him to look at the totality of food production in the US. Because the US and Canada feed much of the world, the answers have global implications.

What follows is most certainly the single most frightening article I have ever read and certainly the most alarming piece that FTW has ever published. Even as we have seen CNN, Britain's Independent and Jane's Defence Weekly acknowledge the reality of Peak Oil and Gas within the last week, acknowledging that world oil and gas reserves are as much as 80% less than predicted, we are also seeing how little real thinking has been devoted to the host of crises certain to follow; at least in terms of publicly accessible thinking.

The following article is so serious in its implications that I have taken the unusual step of underlining some of its key findings. I did that with the intent that the reader treat each underlined passage as a separate and incredibly important fact. Each one of these facts should be read and digested separately to assimilate its importance. I found myself reading one fact and then getting up and walking away until I could come back and (un)comfortably read to the next.

All told, Dale Allen Pfeiffer's research and reporting confirms the worst of FTW's suspicions about the consequences of Peak Oil, and it poses serious questions about what to do next. Not the least of these is why, in a presidential election year, none of the candidates has even acknowledged the problem. Thus far, it is clear that solutions for these questions, perhaps the most important ones facing mankind, will by necessity be found by private individuals and communities, independently of outside or governmental help. Whether the real search for answers comes now, or as the crisis becomes unavoidable, depends solely on us. – MCR]

October 3 , 2003, 1200 PDT, (FTW) -- Human beings (like all other animals) draw their energy from the food they eat. Until the last century, all of the food energy available on this planet was derived from the sun through photosynthesis. Either you ate plants or you ate animals that fed on plants, but the energy in your food was ultimately derived from the sun.

It would have been absurd to think that we would one day run out of sunshine. No, sunshine was an abundant, renewable resource, and the process of photosynthesis fed all life on this planet. It also set a limit on the amount of food that could be generated at any one time, and therefore placed a limit upon population growth. Solar energy has a limited rate of flow into this planet. To increase your food production, you had to increase the acreage under cultivation, and displace your competitors. There was no other way to increase the amount of energy available for food production. Human population grew by displacing everything else and appropriating more and more of the available solar energy.

The need to expand agricultural production was one of the motive causes behind most of the wars in recorded history, along with expansion of the energy base (and agricultural production is truly an essential portion of the energy base). And when Europeans could no longer expand cultivation, they began the task of conquering the world. Explorers were followed by conquistadors and traders and settlers. The declared reasons for expansion may have been trade, avarice, empire or simply curiosity, but at its base, it was all about the expansion of agricultural productivity. Wherever explorers and conquistadors traveled, they may have carried off loot, but they left plantations. And settlers toiled to clear land and establish their own homestead. This conquest and expansion went on until there was no place left for further expansion. Certainly, to this day, landowners and farmers fight to claim still more land for agricultural productivity, but they are fighting over crumbs. Today, virtually all of the productive land on this planet is being exploited by agriculture. What remains unused is too steep, too wet, too dry or lacking in soil nutrients.1

Just when agricultural output could expand no more by increasing acreage, new innovations made possible a more thorough exploitation of the acreage already available. The process of “pest” displacement and appropriation for agriculture accelerated with the industrial revolution as the mechanization of agriculture hastened the clearing and tilling of land and augmented the amount of farmland which could be tended by one person. With every increase in food production, the human population grew apace.

At present, nearly 40% of all land-based photosynthetic capability has been appropriated by human beings.2 In the United States we divert more than half of the energy captured by photosynthesis.3 We have taken over all the prime real estate on this planet. The rest of nature is forced to make due with what is left. Plainly, this is one of the major factors in species extinctions and in ecosystem stress.

The Green Revolution

In the 1950s and 1960s, agriculture underwent a drastic transformation commonly referred to as the Green Revolution. The Green Revolution resulted in the industrialization of agriculture. Part of the advance resulted from new hybrid food plants, leading to more productive food crops. Between 1950 and 1984, as the Green Revolution transformed agriculture around the globe, world grain production increased by 250%.4 That is a tremendous increase in the amount of food energy available for human consumption. This additional energy did not come from an increase in incipient sunlight, nor did it result from introducing agriculture to new vistas of land. The energy for the Green Revolution was provided by fossil fuels in the form of fertilizers (natural gas), pesticides (oil), and hydrocarbon fueled irrigation.

The Green Revolution increased the energy flow to agriculture by an average of 50 times the energy input of traditional agriculture.5 In the most extreme cases, energy consumption by agriculture has increased 100 fold or more.6

In the United States, 400 gallons of oil equivalents are expended annually to feed each American (as of data provided in 1994).7 Agricultural energy consumption is broken down as follows:

· 31% for the manufacture of inorganic fertilizer

· 19% for the operation of field machinery

· 16% for transportation

· 13% for irrigation

· 08% for raising livestock (not including livestock feed)

· 05% for crop drying

· 05% for pesticide production

· 08% miscellaneous8

Energy costs for packaging, refrigeration, transportation to retail outlets, and household cooking are not considered in these figures.

To give the reader an idea of the energy intensiveness of modern agriculture, production of one kilogram of nitrogen for fertilizer requires the energy equivalent of from 1.4 to 1.8 liters of diesel fuel. This is not considering the natural gas feedstock.9 According to The Fertilizer Institute (http://www.tfi.org), in the year from June 30 2001 until June 30 2002 the United States used 12,009,300 short tons of nitrogen fertilizer.10 Using the low figure of 1.4 liters diesel equivalent per kilogram of nitrogen, this equates to the energy content of 15.3 billion liters of diesel fuel, or 96.2 million barrels.

Of course, this is only a rough comparison to aid comprehension of the energy requirements for modern agriculture.

In a very real sense, we are literally eating fossil fuels. However, due to the laws of thermodynamics, there is not a direct correspondence between energy inflow and outflow in agriculture. Along the way, there is a marked energy loss. Between 1945 and 1994, energy input to agriculture increased 4-fold while crop yields only increased 3-fold.11 Since then, energy input has continued to increase without a corresponding increase in crop yield. We have reached the point of marginal returns. Yet, due to soil degradation, increased demands of pest management and increasing energy costs for irrigation (all of which is examined below), modern agriculture must continue increasing its energy expenditures simply to maintain current crop yields. The Green Revolution is becoming bankrupt.

Fossil Fuel Costs

Solar energy is a renewable resource limited only by the inflow rate from the sun to the earth. Fossil fuels, on the other hand, are a stock-type resource that can be exploited at a nearly limitless rate. However, on a human timescale, fossil fuels are nonrenewable. They represent a planetary energy deposit which we can draw from at any rate we wish, but which will eventually be exhausted without renewal. The Green Revolution tapped into this energy deposit and used it to increase agricultural production.

Total fossil fuel use in the United States has increased 20-fold in the last 4 decades. In the US, we consume 20 to 30 times more fossil fuel energy per capita than people in developing nations. Agriculture directly accounts for 17% of all the energy used in this country.12 As of 1990, we were using approximately 1,000 liters (6.41 barrels) of oil to produce food of one hectare of land.13

In 1994, David Pimentel and Mario Giampietro estimated the output/input ratio of agriculture to be around 1.4.14 For 0.7 Kilogram-Calories (kcal) of fossil energy consumed, U.S. agriculture produced 1 kcal of food. The input figure for this ratio was based on FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN) statistics, which consider only fertilizers (without including fertilizer feedstock), irrigation, pesticides (without including pesticide feedstock), and machinery and fuel for field operations. Other agricultural energy inputs not considered were energy and machinery for drying crops, transportation for inputs and outputs to and from the farm, electricity, and construction and maintenance of farm buildings and infrastructures. Adding in estimates for these energy costs brought the input/output energy ratio down to 1.15 Yet this does not include the energy expense of packaging, delivery to retail outlets, refrigeration or household cooking.

In a subsequent study completed later that same year (1994), Giampietro and Pimentel managed to derive a more accurate ratio of the net fossil fuel energy ratio of agriculture.16 In this study, the authors defined two separate forms of energy input: Endosomatic energy and Exosomatic energy. Endosomatic energy is generated through the metabolic transformation of food energy into muscle energy in the human body. Exosomatic energy is generated by transforming energy outside of the human body, such as burning gasoline in a tractor. This assessment allowed the authors to look at fossil fuel input alone and in ratio to other inputs.

Prior to the industrial revolution, virtually 100% of both endosomatic and exosomatic energy was solar driven. Fossil fuels now represent 90% of the exosomatic energy used in the United States and other developed countries.17 The typical exo/endo ratio of pre-industrial, solar powered societies is about 4 to 1. The ratio has changed tenfold in developed countries, climbing to 40 to 1. And in the United States it is more than 90 to 1.18 The nature of the way we use endosomatic energy has changed as well.

The vast majority of endosomatic energy is no longer expended to deliver power for direct economic processes. Now the majority of endosomatic energy is utilized to generate the flow of information directing the flow of exosomatic energy driving machines. Considering the 90/1 exo/endo ratio in the United States, each endosomatic kcal of energy expended in the US induces the circulation of 90 kcal of exosomatic energy. As an example, a small gasoline engine can convert the 38,000 kcal in one gallon of gasoline into 8.8 KWh (Kilowatt hours), which equates to about 3 weeks of work for one human being.19

In their refined study, Giampietro and Pimentel found that 10 kcal of exosomatic energy are required to produce 1 kcal of food delivered to the consumer in the U.S. food system. This includes packaging and all delivery expenses, but excludes household cooking).20 The U.S. food system consumes ten times more energy than it produces in food energy. This disparity is made possible by nonrenewable fossil fuel stocks.

Assuming a figure of 2,500 kcal per capita for the daily diet in the United States, the 10/1 ratio translates into a cost of 35,000 kcal of exosomatic energy per capita each day. However, considering that the average return on one hour of endosomatic labor in the U.S. is about 100,000 kcal of exosomatic energy, the flow of exosomatic energy required to supply the daily diet is achieved in only 20 minutes of labor in our current system. Unfortunately, if you remove fossil fuels from the equation, the daily diet will require 111 hours of endosomatic labor per capita; that is, the current U.S. daily diet would require nearly three weeks of labor per capita to produce.

Quite plainly, as fossil fuel production begins to decline within the next decade, there will be less energy available for the production of food.

Soil, Cropland and Water

Modern intensive agriculture is unsustainable. Technologically-enhanced agriculture has augmented soil erosion, polluted and overdrawn groundwater and surface water, and even (largely due to increased pesticide use) caused serious public health and environmental problems. Soil erosion, overtaxed cropland and water resource overdraft in turn lead to even greater use of fossil fuels and hydrocarbon products. More hydrocarbon-based fertilizers must be applied, along with more pesticides; irrigation water requires more energy to pump; and fossil fuels are used to process polluted water.

It takes 500 years to replace 1 inch of topsoil.21 In a natural environment, topsoil is built up by decaying plant matter and weathering rock, and it is protected from erosion by growing plants. In soil made susceptible by agriculture, erosion is reducing productivity up to 65% each year.22 Former prairie lands, which constitute the bread basket of the United States, have lost one half of their topsoil after farming for about 100 years. This soil is eroding 30 times faster than the natural formation rate.23 Food crops are much hungrier than the natural grasses that once covered the Great Plains. As a result, the remaining topsoil is increasingly depleted of nutrients. Soil erosion and mineral depletion removes about $20 billion worth of plant nutrients from U.S. agricultural soils every year.24 Much of the soil in the Great Plains is little more than a sponge into which we must pour hydrocarbon-based fertilizers in order to produce crops.

Every year in the U.S., more than 2 million acres of cropland are lost to erosion, salinization and water logging. On top of this, urbanization, road building, and industry claim another 1 million acres annually from farmland.24 Approximately three-quarters of the land area in the United States is devoted to agriculture and commercial forestry.25 The expanding human population is putting increasing pressure on land availability. Incidentally, only a small portion of U.S. land area remains available for the solar energy technologies necessary to support a solar energy-based economy. The land area for harvesting biomass is likewise limited. For this reason, the development of solar energy or biomass must be at the expense of agriculture.

Modern agriculture also places a strain on our water resources. Agriculture consumes fully 85% of all U.S. freshwater resources.26 Overdraft is occurring from many surface water resources, especially in the west and south. The typical example is the Colorado River, which is diverted to a trickle by the time it reaches the Pacific. Yet surface water only supplies 60% of the water used in irrigation. The remainder, and in some places the majority of water for irrigation, comes from ground water aquifers. Ground water is recharged slowly by the percolation of rainwater through the earth's crust. Less than 0.1% of the stored ground water mined annually is replaced by rainfall.27 The great Ogallala aquifer that supplies agriculture, industry and home use in much of the southern and central plains states has an annual overdraft up to 160% above its recharge rate. The Ogallala aquifer will become unproductive in a matter of decades.28

We can illustrate the demand that modern agriculture places on water resources by looking at a farmland producing corn. A corn crop that produces 118 bushels/acre/year requires more than 500,000 gallons/acre of water during the growing season. The production of 1 pound of maize requires 1,400 pounds (or 175 gallons) of water.29 Unless something is done to lower these consumption rates, modern agriculture will help to propel the United States into a water crisis.

In the last two decades, the use of hydrocarbon-based pesticides in the U.S. has increased 33-fold, yet each year we lose more crops to pests.30 This is the result of the abandonment of traditional crop rotation practices. Nearly 50% of U.S. corn land is grown continuously as a monoculture.31 This results in an increase in corn pests, which in turn requires the use of more pesticides. Pesticide use on corn crops had increased 1,000-fold even before the introduction of genetically engineered, pesticide resistant corn. However, corn losses have still risen 4-fold.32

Modern intensive agriculture is unsustainable. It is damaging the land, draining water supplies and polluting the environment. And all of this requires more and more fossil fuel input to pump irrigation water, to replace nutrients, to provide pest protection, to remediate the environment and simply to hold crop production at a constant. Yet this necessary fossil fuel input is going to crash headlong into declining fossil fuel production.

US Consumption

In the United States, each person consumes an average of 2,175 pounds of food per person per year. This provides the U.S. consumer with an average daily energy intake of 3,600 Calories. The world average is 2,700 Calories per day.33 Fully 19% of the U.S. caloric intake comes from fast food. Fast food accounts for 34% of the total food consumption for the average U.S. citizen. The average citizen dines out for one meal out of four.34

One third of the caloric intake of the average American comes from animal sources (including dairy products), totaling 800 pounds per person per year. This diet means that U.S. citizens derive 40% of their calories from fat-nearly half of their diet. 35

Americans are also grand consumers of water. As of one decade ago, Americans were consuming 1,450 gallons/day/capita (g/d/c), with the largest amount expended on agriculture. Allowing for projected population increase, consumption by 2050 is projected at 700 g/d/c, which hydrologists consider to be minimal for human needs.36 This is without taking into consideration declining fossil fuel production.

To provide all of this food requires the application of 0.6 million metric tons of pesticides in North America per year. This is over one fifth of the total annual world pesticide use, estimated at 2.5 million tons.37 Worldwide, more nitrogen fertilizer is used per year than can be supplied through natural sources. Likewise, water is pumped out of underground aquifers at a much higher rate than it is recharged. And stocks of important minerals, such as phosphorus and potassium, are quickly approaching exhaustion.38

Total U.S. energy consumption is more than three times the amount of solar energy harvested as crop and forest products. The United States consumes 40% more energy annually than the total amount of solar energy captured yearly by all U.S. plant biomass. Per capita use of fossil energy in North America is five times the world average.39

Our prosperity is built on the principal of exhausting the world's resources as quickly as possible, without any thought to our neighbors, all the other life on this planet, or our children.

Population & Sustainability

Considering a growth rate of 1.1% per year, the U.S. population is projected to double by 2050. As the population expands, an estimated one acre of land will be lost for every person added to the U.S. population. Currently, there are 1.8 acres of farmland available to grow food for each U.S. citizen. By 2050, this will decrease to 0.6 acres. 1.2 acres per person is required in order to maintain current dietary standards.40

Presently, only two nations on the planet are major exporters of grain: the United States and Canada.41 By 2025, it is expected that the U.S. will cease to be a food exporter due to domestic demand. The impact on the U.S. economy could be devastating, as food exports earn $40 billion for the U.S. annually. More importantly, millions of people around the world could starve to death without U.S. food exports.42

Domestically, 34.6 million people are living in poverty as of 2002 census data.43 And this number is continuing to grow at an alarming rate. Too many of these people do not have a sufficient diet. As the situation worsens, this number will increase and the United States will witness growing numbers of starvation fatalities.

There are some things that we can do to at least alleviate this tragedy. It is suggested that streamlining agriculture to get rid of losses, waste and mismanagement might cut the energy inputs for food production by up to one-half.35 In place of fossil fuel-based fertilizers, we could utilize livestock manures that are now wasted. It is estimated that livestock manures contain 5 times the amount of fertilizer currently used each year.36 Perhaps most effective would be to eliminate meat from our diet altogether.37

Mario Giampietro and David Pimentel postulate that a sustainable food system is possible only if four conditions are met:

1. Environmentally sound agricultural technologies must be implemented.

2. Renewable energy technologies must be put into place.

3. Major increases in energy efficiency must reduce exosomatic energy consumption per capita.

4. Population size and consumption must be compatible with maintaining the stability of environmental processes.38

Providing that the first three conditions are met, with a reduction to less than half of the exosomatic energy consumption per capita, the authors place the maximum population for a sustainable economy at 200 million.39 Several other studies have produced figures within this ballpark (Energy and Population, Werbos, Paul J. http://www.dieoff.com/page63.htm; Impact of Population Growth on Food Supplies and Environment, Pimentel, David, et al. http://www.dieoff.com/page57.htm).

Given that the current U.S. population is in excess of 292 million, 40 that would mean a reduction of 92 million. To achieve a sustainable economy and avert disaster, the United States must reduce its population by at least one-third. The black plague during the 14th Century claimed approximately one-third of the European population (and more than half of the Asian and Indian populations), plunging the continent into a darkness from which it took them nearly two centuries to emerge.41

None of this research considers the impact of declining fossil fuel production. The authors of all of these studies believe that the mentioned agricultural crisis will only begin to impact us after 2020, and will not become critical until 2050. The current peaking of global oil production (and subsequent decline of production), along with the peak of North American natural gas production will very likely precipitate this agricultural crisis much sooner than expected. Quite possibly, a U.S. population reduction of one-third will not be effective for sustainability; the necessary reduction might be in excess of one-half. And, for sustainability, global population will have to be reduced from the current 6.32 billion people42 to 2 billion-a reduction of 68% or over two-thirds. The end of this decade could see spiraling food prices without relief. And the coming decade could see massive starvation on a global level such as never experienced before by the human race.

Three Choices

Considering the utter necessity of population reduction, there are three obvious choices awaiting us.

We can-as a society-become aware of our dilemma and consciously make the choice not to add more people to our population. This would be the most welcome of our three options, to choose consciously and with free will to responsibly lower our population. However, this flies in the face of our biological imperative to procreate. It is further complicated by the ability of modern medicine to extend our longevity, and by the refusal of the Religious Right to consider issues of population management. And then, there is a strong business lobby to maintain a high immigration rate in order to hold down the cost of labor. Though this is probably our best choice, it is the option least likely to be chosen.

Failing to responsibly lower our population, we can force population cuts through government regulations. Is there any need to mention how distasteful this option would be? How many of us would choose to live in a world of forced sterilization and population quotas enforced under penalty of law? How easily might this lead to a culling of the population utilizing principles of eugenics?

This leaves the third choice, which itself presents an unspeakable picture of suffering and death. Should we fail to acknowledge this coming crisis and determine to deal with it, we will be faced with a die-off from which civilization may very possibly never revive. We will very likely lose more than the numbers necessary for sustainability. Under a die-off scenario, conditions will deteriorate so badly that the surviving human population would be a negligible fraction of the present population. And those survivors would suffer from the trauma of living through the death of their civilization, their neighbors, their friends and their families. Those survivors will have seen their world crushed into nothing.

The questions we must ask ourselves now are, how can we allow this to happen, and what can we do to prevent it? Does our present lifestyle mean so much to us that we would subject ourselves and our children to this fast approaching tragedy simply for a few more years of conspicuous consumption?

Author's Note

This is possibly the most important article I have written to date. It is certainly the most frightening, and the conclusion is the bleakest I have ever penned. This article is likely to greatly disturb the reader; it has certainly disturbed me. However, it is important for our future that this paper should be read, acknowledged and discussed.

I am by nature positive and optimistic. In spite of this article, I continue to believe that we can find a positive solution to the multiple crises bearing down upon us. Though this article may provoke a flood of hate mail, it is simply a factual report of data and the obvious conclusions that follow from it.

-----

ENDNOTES

1 Availability of agricultural land for crop and livestock production, Buringh, P. Food and Natural Resources, Pimentel. D. and Hall. C.W. (eds), Academic Press, 1989.

2 Human appropriation of the products of photosynthesis, Vitousek, P.M. et al. Bioscience 36, 1986. http://www.science.duq.edu/esm/unit2-3

3 Land, Energy and Water: the constraints governing Ideal US Population Size, Pimental, David and Pimentel, Marcia. Focus, Spring 1991. NPG Forum, 1990. http://www.dieoff.com/page136.htm

4 Constraints on the Expansion of Global Food Supply, Kindell, Henry H. and Pimentel, David. Ambio Vol. 23 No. 3, May 1994. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. http://www.dieoff.com/page36htm

5 The Tightening Conflict: Population, Energy Use, and the Ecology of Agriculture, Giampietro, Mario and Pimentel, David, 1994. http://www.dieoff.com/page69.htm

6 Op. Cit. See note 4.

7 Food, Land, Population and the U.S. Economy, Pimentel, David and Giampietro, Mario. Carrying Capacity Network, 11/21/1994. http://www.dieoff.com/page55.htm

8 Comparison of energy inputs for inorganic fertilizer and manure based corn production, McLaughlin, N.B., et al. Canadian Agricultural Engineering, Vol. 42, No. 1, 2000.

9 Ibid.

10 US Fertilizer Use Statistics. http://www.tfi.org/Statistics/USfertuse2.asp

11 Food, Land, Population and the U.S. Economy, Executive Summary, Pimentel, David and Giampietro, Mario. Carrying Capacity Network, 11/21/1994. http://www.dieoff.com/page40.htm

12 Ibid.

13 Op. Cit. See note 3.

14 Op. Cit. See note 7.

15 Ibid.

16 Op. Cit. See note 5.

17 Ibid.

18 Ibid.

19 Ibid.

20 Ibid.

21 Op. Cit. See note 11.

22 Ibid.

23 Ibid.

24 Ibid.

24 Ibid.

25 Op Cit. See note 3.

26 Op Cit. See note 11.

27 Ibid.

28 Ibid.

29 Ibid.

30 Op. Cit. See note 3.

31 Op. Cit. See note 5.

32 Op. Cit. See note 3.

33 Op. Cit. See note 11.

34 Food Consumption and Access, Lynn Brantley, et al. Capital Area Food Bank, 6/1/2001. http://www.clagettfarm.org/purchasing.html

35 Op. Cit. See note 11.

36 Ibid.

37 Op. Cit. See note 5.

38 Ibid.

39 Ibid.

40 Op. Cit. See note 11.

41 Op. Cit. See note 4.

42 Op. Cit. See note 11.

43 Poverty 2002. The U.S. Census Bureau. http://www.census.gov/hhes/poverty/poverty02/pov02hi.html

35 Op. Cit. See note 3.

36 Ibid.

37 Diet for a Small Planet, Lappé, Frances Moore. Ballantine Books, 1971-revised 1991. http://www.dietforasmallplanet.com/

38 Op. Cit. See note 5.

39 Ibid.

40 U.S. and World Population Clocks. U.S. Census Bureau. http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html

41 A Distant Mirror, Tuckman Barbara. Ballantine Books, 1978.

42 Op. Cit. See note 40.

Please Read This- Life After The Oil Crash

The link below is a very informative and eye opening explanation about 'Peak Oil', what it is, how it will affect the World in the coming years, and most importantly, what we can do about it.

Life After The Oil Crash

What Matters Most is Reported the Least- Goodbye To All That Oil

While the corporate news networks are STILL creaming there shorts over an old dead guy that wears a funny hat, other, MUCH MORE IMPORTANT information is left by the wayside.

What about the FACT that more and more energy experts are aligning with M. King Hubberts "Peak-Oil" prediction.

The peak oil idea – which says that world oil production will go into irreversible decline sometime in the next decade or two – is quickly morphing into conventional wisdom.

Until recently, peak-oil analysts got about as much respect from the energy establishment as do perpetual-motion enthusiasts. But now, with oil prices headed for uncharted territory and even Saudi Arabia seemingly unable to boost production to higher levels, the peak oil idea – which says that world oil production will go into irreversible decline sometime in the the next decade or two – is quickly morphing into conventional wisdom.

Fifty years ago, geologist M. King Hubbert showed that the output of an oilfield, or indeed the oil production of an entire country, increases year by year up to the point (a "peak") at which approximately half the oil is exhausted. From there, he said, annual output drops inexorably toward zero.

Hubbert hit the bullseye with his prediction that U.S. production would peak in 1970. And over the past half century, country after country has seen its oil production hit a peak and start dropping. Yet for decades, economists, petroleum executives and government officials refused to follow Hubbert's analysis to its logical conclusion – that in the easily foreseeable future, humanity will pass over a global peak of oil production, where there awaits a very grim, slippery slope.

peak oil hubbard
The Hubbert Curve, designed by geophysicist M. King Hubbert, illustrates that over time, the rate of oil production rises and then falls in a bell-shape pattern.
But gradually, in the past couple of years, the main issue in the oil debate has shifted from whether a world peak will occur to when. And when it comes to peak-oil predictions these days, there is no shortage.

Please place your bets

Colin Campbell of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas (ASPO) predicts that production will begin its decline between now and 2010.

British Petroleum exploration consultant Francis Harper believes it will happen between 2010 and 2020. Consulting firm PFC Energy puts it at around 2010 to 2015. The publication Petroleum Review predicts that demand will outstrip supply in 2007. Richard Heinberg, author of the 2003 book, The Party's Over: Oil, War, and the Fate of Industrial Societies, expects a peak in 2007 or 2008.

Retired Princeton professor Kenneth Deffeyes, author of the just-published, Beyond Oil: The View from Hubbert's Peak is more pessimistic, and more specific, about when the peak will happen: Thanksgiving Day, 2005. (His tongue appears to be in his cheek regarding the day, but not the year).

If all that is too gloomy for you, energy consultant Michael Lynch maintains that there's no peak in sight for "the next 20 or 30 years." Peter Odell of Erasmus University in the Netherlands has tacked a full 30 years onto Deffeyes' grim prediction, setting a date of Thanksgiving 2035. And Uncle Sam has the cheeriest news of all: a peak year of 2037 forecast by the Department of Energy.

Now how many times has someone told you, "Oh, yeah, all my life they've been saying the oil's about to run out, and it hasn't done it yet"? In fact, the record of oil forecasting has not been an exercise in Chicken-Littlism.

Asking, "When will oil peak and begin its decline?" (not, "When will it run out?"), the prognosticators of the past came up with dates only five to 10 years ahead of many of today's predictions. Roger Bentley of the University of Reading found that in the 1970s – during the last outbreak of peak-oil fever – analysts from "reputable organizations" (including Esso, Shell, the UK Department of Energy, and the U.N., as well as Hubbert himself) were nearly unanimous in predicting a world oil peak somewhere around the year 2000.

Does the peak year even matter?

With oil prices soaring, economic logic says the sooner the peak's date can be nailed down, the better. Financial web sites are buzzing about it, but in a somewhat merrier key than the peak-oil sites. One research firm is even forecasting production peaks for individual oil companies, with obvious implications for stock values.

On the other hand, if we're more concerned about improving humanity's prospects in 2010 or 2037 than Wall Street's prospects at the close of trading tomorrow, then one prediction is probably as good as another. In designing an energy policy that can be sustained far into the post-petroleum future, the precise timing of the peak is of about as much practical importance as the date of the next total eclipse of the sun (on that forecast, astronomers agree: March 29, 2006).

A recent report prepared for the U.S. government by Science Applications International Corporation suggests that whatever the peak year turns out to be, 2005 is the time to get moving on energy policy. The report's lead author, Robert L. Hirsch, concluded that strong action must be taken at least 10, and preferably 20 years before we reach a world oil peak, if we are to avoid "a long period of significant economic hardship worldwide."

If Hirsch is right, and if peak-oil analysts like Campbell and Deffeyes have correctly predicted a peak before 2010, we're in serious trouble already. Even with bold, immediate moves to wean ourselves from oil, "significant economic hardship" is probably the very best we can hope for.

But even if the DOE's own rosy forecast of a 2037 peak is to prove on target, we're left with little time for leisurely Sunday drives. Initiating, in Hirsch's words, "crash program mitigation 20 years before peaking" in a thoroughly oil-addicted country will require at least a decade of political action just to get started.

Shrinking supplies of oil could actually help mitigate this century's other looming crisis: global warming. There too, the clock is ticking. In a 2002 paper in the journal Science, 18 eminent researchers urged massive, immediate investment in a diverse array of new, unproven non-fossil-fuel technologies if we're to supply the world's energy needs with no net carbon emissions, even by the year 2050.

And energy's not the whole story. One example: To supply the total current U.S. production of plastics, synthetic fibers and rubber, solvents, and other petrochemicals using biomass (plant-derived materials) instead of petroleum would consume the entire net annual growth of all the nation's forests – and we're already using that wood for other purposes.

Supply, demand, and physical reality

Debates among peak-of-production soothsayers and their critics remain unsettled because a crucial quantity – the precise amount of oil still in the ground worldwide – remains unknown. Nevertheless, two things are becoming more and more clear: Vast new oilfields just don't seem to be out there, and in existing fields, producers are getting less and less bang for the buck. The oil still in the ground will prove a lot harder to suck out than the oil that's already been pumped and burned.

In those fields first discovered and exploited in the past century, the oil was almost as easy and cheap to extract as Jed Clampett's bubblin' crude. But with many of the fields in production today, oil has to be brought from greater depths, requiring a lot more energy and often necessitating injection of water, steam or various gases.

Such methods may be wrecking mature fields, causing them to dry up more quickly. Energy investment banker Matthew Simmons has been saying that overpumping may already have damaged oilfields in Saudi Arabia and Iran, rendering vast amounts of oil unrecoverable.

In 2000, operators of Mexico's largest oilfield began injecting nitrogen gas into wells. As a result, they temporarily achieved a much higher extraction rate. But this year, the field fell prematurely into permanent decline.

The size of world reserves is not only unknown, it's beyond our control. With that quantity fixed, the chief way for humans to stretch out the oil curve is to cut the rate of consumption. Fast-rising demand in the world's two largest countries, China and India, is said to be worsening the current oil crunch, but before we in the West point fingers, it's important to remember that one average American consumes as much oil as 35 citizens of India.

For decades, Prof. Albert Bartlett of the University of Colorado has been calling attention to the ability of conservation to extend the life of a resource. For example, assume that the nation of West Vehicula calculates that it has about 60 years worth of oil in the ground, given that it's planning to increase consumption at 4 percent per year. Bartlett's simple calculations show that the Vehiculans could stretch the lifetime of that resource to more than 300 years by holding consumption growth to zero.

Won't the problem take care of itself? As prices rise, people will voluntarily cut consumption, right? Well, in a 2003 article, energy economist Andrew McKillop showed that at least during the 1990s, the opposite happened. Each time oil prices rose, world demand rose within six-12 months. And over on the far side of Hubbert's peak, it will be physical reality, not economics, that governs consumption. With supply shrinking year by year, every barrel that comes out of the ground will likely be burned lickety-split.

The view from the top

Environmentalists may be tempted to anticipate an ever-worsening scarcity of oil as just the thing to shock America into conservation and serious development of alternative energy. But what if – and this is not hard at all to envision – the peak prompts a worldwide fossil-fuel rush instead?

Expensive, energy-inefficient and environmentally disastrous efforts to exploit oil and tar sands in Canada, Venezuela and elsewhere could be cranked up to full speed. The militarization of American society could become total, as the government's chief mission becomes control of oil across the globe. (The number-one target, of course, would be the Persian Gulf, where resides 63 percent of the world's remaining oil.) And we would likely exploit our large coal reserves in a big way, breaking new global-warming records as we go.

The best alternative to that nightmare is renewable energy. Geologist Walter Youngquist, author of the 1997 book, Geodestinies, has taken a hard-headed look at the inventory of alternatives to fossil fuels and concluded that to make them work, we'll have to put an end to our profligate ways. He paints a picture of a frugal, restrained society very different from the one we've lived in on the upslope of the oil curve.

Yes, peak oil's in the news, but it's only beginning to seep into the national conciousness. Maybe we'll know the idea is really catching on when Hollywood gets interested. But by the time The Day After the Peak hits your local cineplex, it might turn out to be a reality show.

Stan Cox is senior research scientist at the Land Institute in Salina, Kan. and a member of the Institute's Prairie Writers Circle.

Patriot Act not so patriotic after all...

Any American who has not read the Patriot Act, NEEDS TO READ IT! House Condemns Patriot Act

by Jennifer McKee Gazette State Bureau

HELENA - Montana lawmakers overwhelmingly passed what its sponsor called the nation's most strongly worded criticism of the federal Patriot Act on Friday, uniting politicians of all stripes. The resolution, which already galloped through the Senate and passed the House 88-12 Friday, must survive a final vote before it officially passes. Senate Joint Resolution 19, sponsored by Sen. Jim Elliott, D-Trout Creek, says that while the 2005 Legislature supports the federal government's fight against terrorism, the so-called Patriot Act of 2001 granted authorities sweeping powers that violate citizens' rights enshrined in both the U.S. and Montanan constitutions. The resolution, which does not carry the weight of a law but expresses the Legislature's opinion, encourages Montana law enforcement agencies not to participate in investigations authorized under the Patriot Act that violate Montanans' constitutional rights. It requests all libraries in the state to post a sign warning citizens that under the Patriot Act, federal agents may force librarians to turn over a record of books a person has checked out and never inform that citizen of the request. The resolution asks Montana's attorney general to review any state intelligence information and destroy it if is not tied directly to suspected criminals. It also asks the attorney general to find out how many Montanans have been arrested under the Patriot Act and how many people have been subject to so-called "sneak and peaks," or government searches of a person's property without the person's knowledge. Elliott, a Democrat and rancher from northwestern Montana, sponsored the resolution, but it garnered support from Republicans on the far right of the political spectrum. "Sometimes we just take liberty for granted in the country," said Rep. Roger Koopman, R-Bozeman, who keeps a plant called "the Liberty Tree" on his legislative desk. Koopman said his Liberty Tree was "blooming for this bill." "Frankly, what it says to me is that civil liberties are a bipartisan issue in Montana," said Rep. Rick Maejde, R-Trout Creek, who led the House debate for the resolution. Elliott said he was "very, very pleased" the resolution had such support. "Montana isn't the first state that passed a resolution, but this resolution is the strongest statement against the constitutional violations of the Patriot Act of any state and almost every city or county," he said. Twelve representatives - all Republicans - voted against the measure, including Rep. Bob Lake, R-Hamilton. "I don't like resolutions because they do absolutely nothing," he said in an interview after the vote. He also said the resolution was too vague. Is it a sacrifice of personal liberty to not be able to take a gun on an airplane? he asked. Is that the kind of thing this resolution objects to? "So, they're going to get this thing back in D.C. and say, 'O.K., Montana doesn't like what we're doing. So what?,' " he said. "It has no meaning to it

America Moving Toward Theocracy?

As the line seperating church and state becomes more blurred each day, this question is being raised more and more.

I offer some evidence:

The mainstream media's continued diversionary tactics focusing on the Pope's oncomming death instead of what is really important. What a lucky break they got, being able to move directly from Terri Schiavo to the Pope. You just know the religious right wingers are giddy with excitement over this.

Here's Reuters headline for today: "Pope Weakens as World Braces for His Death"

Did I miss something? He is after all just a man. I think that's a little extreme if you ask me.
Heck I read when he was younger he wanted to become an actor. Well, I guess being the Pope is like playing the lead role in the movie that is Catholocism.

Here is a bit of information you will never hear the media report:

Every Day the US government has to borrow roughly 1 Billion (yes with a B) dollars to keep running.

I think I will repeat that just so it sinks in: Every Day the US government has to borrow roughly 1 Billion (yes with a B) dollars to keep running.

Come on people, WAKE UP!

The Answers by RogerRoger

What follows is a manifesto by RogerRoger in response to his sisters request of his opinions on the book: The Case for Christ: A Journalist's Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus by Lee Strober.

A view on the Personal Rejection of Christianity

CHAPTER ONE: Religion and Logic

I want to start by pointing out a few beliefs I have established since I quit going to church.

I do believe that there is a creator of life, and that it could possibly be the creator of all known life in the universe, but is at least responsible for all life on Earth. I don’t agree with most scientific belief that life on this planet came from the primeval ooze. It seems to me that nature is much too chaotic and random for something like that to happen, even in stable elements. I have always accepted that some sentient being is responsible for the design and perpetuation of all species of Earth herein. To prove this, I always point out the structure of DNA. Without getting too specific, DNA, the building blocks of all life, consists of groups of nucleotides in a variety of short repeating arrangements from a few basic chemical compounds, like the alphabet arranged into words on a page from strokes of a pen. This suggests that whatever created life that we understand it as, had to think in symbolic and semantic terms like we do. That is, it had a sophisticated protocol or language in which to build all things living and in which each form of life could perpetuate itself based on this microscopic blueprint. This is no random accident. The near perfect balance of the Earth’s ecosystem we as humans are slowly but surely destroying is another example of what appears to be the design of a great global architect.

I also believe that this sentient being is flawed like we are, and have accepted this due to the fact that so much of animal instinct and behavior stems from their inevitable mortality. Every living thing must die, and something like it must replace it for it to continue to exist in similar form. All things living also must transform matter into energy in a most crude fashion. The entire ecosystem and global food chain on Earth is based on life forms either consuming one another or symbiotically depending on one another, whilst battling the elements. Each form of life gets defined by its role in the ecosystem. It’s not really impressive work for a being that is supposed to know all and be all, in my opinion. Certainly better than anything man has yet to devise, but that has little to do with faith. We as human beings are capable of collectively creating things far beyond the capacity of what one or a few individuals can. Things such as jealousy, greed, a unique sense of purpose, and an unevolved imagination are limiting traits that keep us from going further.

But back to God…

There is also the “Typhoid and Swans” issue, to steal a line from Thomas Harris. The comment plays on the assumption that both of them came from the same creator. Many people accept that God is love and love is all there is. I have a lot of trouble believing that. I prefer to believe that if God is all knowing, all seeing, Alpha and Omega, that God must both be good and evil. There certainly seems to be enough of both in nature if you choose to interpret it that way. There is so much suffering in the world that it makes it very difficult for me to believe that God is only capable of love. And certainly God cannot be in control of all that goes on, or divine intervention would be too commonplace to need a word to describe it as such.

If all events in human history were part of God’s infallible plan, then there would be no need for prayer other than to make people feel a little less anxious. Our fates pre-determined, there would also be no reason to make any choices in life with any vigor or enthusiasm until first being assured of God’s approval. In fact, if all of our choices in life are part of a great scheme crafted by God, they really are not choices at all, merely a tiny inkling of a VERY large sequence of pre-meditated events. With all decisions now based on glorifying God, who has already mapped out your life, your only motivation in life is to await the next life where things don’t have a predetermined end and to serve and cajole the author of your pre-defined existence in the meantime. Thus, worship and devout practice become a means to perpetuate the belief in the divine plan. A never-ending cycle of worship-causes-belief-causes-worship ensues. What a dull and senseless life this suggests. It does attempt to explain away the helplessness and uncertainty we feel in life, when events beyond our control take place, but only in a closed-minded and demeaning manner.

One of the things that most people seem to admire about the idea of a compassionate and benevolent God is that a being with such power chooses not to wield it unless His wisdom dictates such displays. In the case of mankind, the power of the gods can only be abused and ultimately cause only suffering. In other words, it is accepted by many that mankind will never posses the wisdom to responsibly and benevolently use the power that God has, and thus, mankind is inferior in every respect.

Why then, does mankind continue to suffer, including the devout? The two possible logical explanations I came up with are that either the creator of life has not visited the Earth for millennia and therefore cannot display any wisdom or power, or He cannot change the course of history already set in motion and stands idly by as an observer on-high as we continue to exploit, enslave, torture and murder each other, even if it is done in his name.

Why should violent, diabolical, hateful people live for generations and even attain wealth and power? To put the blame on Satan is to suggest the possibility that the divine plan is one that can be interrupted by the outside influences of deception and cruelty. Therefore, the divine plan either contains flaws or includes evil in its design. A more logical reasoning is one I will get into momentarily, but basically is explained by mankind’s will to dominate and our ability to deceive.

As far as I’m concerned, divine intervention is just a faithful follower’s interpretation of cause and effect. It suggests a reward system for those that remain faithful, which is an animal instinct and should be dismissed as such. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of it recorded after the Old Testament anyway, the majority being in Revelations, after that.

I also know of many faithful people, ones that were as kind and giving and compassionate as could be admired by God or man, who have suffered needlessly to disease, personal peril or tragic loss. To attribute such tragedy (ie. write it off and accept it) as the wisdom of God is both contradictory and foolish. True, tragedy can often bring strength to others, possibly bring people together, but this kind of thing can only be truly resolved by someone who never asks “Why”, when such tragedy might occur. I think most people at least privately question needless suffering. A difficult subject to ponder to be certain….

To reject the belief in the divine plan shifts the abstract of the future into the form of a personal destiny. Each and every individual has their own desires and personal aspirations, be it the immediate goal to get to 3^rd street before lunch or to have that much needed hit or drink before the withdrawal symptoms come creeping in, to the lifelong dreams of seeing your child grow up safe and sound, being a big success and retiring in the countryside or aspiring to dominate the will of mankind through terror, mass hysteria and lies. I believe all of these aspirations stem from choices made throughout life and that these choices, along with all circumstances beyond your control, shape your personal destiny. Most of these aspirations stem from mankind’s natural tendency to desire dominance over something. This feeling applies to all of mankind, from the most subtle form of growing a garden or raising pets, to the most radical form of ruling a nation of people with an iron fist. Mankind reached the top of the food chain centuries ago, and has continued to abide by the will of nature in adding new tiers within our own species to this structure of survival. To reach the top of this structure by way of dominance has often required methods of cruelty, intelligence and deception, but can also be obtained by wisdom, trust and honor, which are God-like qualities. There usually is no “top tier”, as no single individual can remain in power without subordinates to maintain and enforce this power, and this power only holds as long as you have acceptance by the masses that you are in control, be it by honor, wisdom, fear or deception. Therefore, every person, even a dictator or president, will either be dominated or depend on another at some level.

Religions throughout the world also accept that human nature dictates every man and woman must have a master of some form or another. They choose to accept that your personal destiny and this “master” are one and the same. This assumption makes you jump to the conclusion that your destiny is shaped by who or what you serve, instead of what choices you have made in life, regardless of those things in life that are beyond your control. I have found the philosophies of Christians, Muslims and Jews, just as a few examples; do away with free will and rational thought in favor of absolute trust and humility for their deity of choice, forgoing all elements of the unknown in the process. Most likely, they accept this because they believe that since they were created by God, they owe their life most-precious to Him, and He must be the ruler of all mankind for this reason alone. This is very similar to the human notion that any craft or design created by mankind was made for the express purpose of obedience or service. I also believe, as I said before, they accept this because they assume that God is only capable of love, and is the only one who possesses the wisdom and authority to rule mankind. Therefore, they are indebted to return their love through obedience. The next step in this line of thought is that all things unknown to mankind are known to God, and therefore we are not destined to understand the principles of science, philosophy and psychology. To attempt to do so can only be interpreted through means of the self, and therefore knowledge of such things is harmful and dangerous. This reasoning does not take into account the natural curiosity and adaptability that mankind possesses, however. Human nature dictates the need to learn and adapt as part of survival. I believe that to dismiss these traits as destructive is foolish so long as the knowledge that mankind attains is accompanied by the wisdom to see both the destructive, as well as the beneficial uses for it. In other words, the religious line of thinking has no hope for the future of mankind without God.

Religions in general hide the fact that common thought and common aspirations among mankind (such as a religion dominating a person’s way of life) are shaping the destiny of mankind throughout human history by transforming religion into common law. The underlying intent is to not only preserve their philosophy, but to preserve a form of order that keeps the masses docile and content for generations, allowing those in power to stay in power. It can often be done in a way just as effective as cruelty and deceit. In the case of deceit, what separates lies from the truth is often only your perception of it, so the lines between the two can be blurred. It seems ‘truth’ and common thought are one and the same. Therefore, those in control of common thought are truly powerful indeed.

History tells us that many a religion has been destroyed by a mightier race of peoples, causing the defeated culture to be absorbed, and their religion lost. Does that mean the way of life they took so seriously meant nothing and was all a lie? What about the vast number of religions that exist throughout the world today? I’d bet most all of them claim their way of life is the only way to achieve everlasting happiness in life and beyond death. What makes Christianity the only true way to achieve this?

CHAPTER TWO: The Christian Ideals and Principles

I can easily see the appeal of Christianity compared to other religions. Religion, to me, is the ultimate form of self-discipline. The accomplished and ever sustained mission to keep one’s self in check for a cause greater than one’s own individuality. It gives people hope who have none. It calms their fears and binds those together who worship together, thus making the religion itself more powerful.

Christianity has the added bonus of being one of the few religions that has done away with daily ritualistic practices in favor of “amazing grace”. To immediately be forgiven of all wrongdoing no matter how severe, knowing that all your mistakes in life have been paid for; “just ask and you will receive”. The mere suggestion that God had a son and put him up for slaughter suggests that God was trying to first unite with humanity and prove His existence by sending a human version of himself into the world and then sacrificing him as an offering like the Jews were instructed to do with their animals many years before. This sacrifice is symbolic of your ticket to paradise in exchange for your everlasting soul. This sounds appealing to just about anyone who is well in touch with their own mortality (that is, afraid of it).

To me, I see two sides to someone who offers unconditional forgiveness when it’s just a person and not God. They can be seen like the prodigal son’s father who showed mercy to his son who had squandered his fortune, and takes him in to be part of the family. Or they can be seen as someone who wants you hook, line and sinker and tells you what you want to hear. Now telling me my creator is dangling my eternal soul in front of me whilst offering forgiveness for all my wrongdoing, guilt ridden or not, makes me first ask “Is it fair or even sensible to judge something that may have created you and if so, is judging you for all your life’s deeds?” This is a moral decision in itself and one that most people will find too intimidating to confront. The decision to judge God and the Word is also difficult to do based on fact since most of what we know about Him is based on faith. This goes back to the common belief most religions share that God is both the wisest and most merciful of all, and therefore can be trusted utterly. But what proof do we have of this when such merciless violence has been committed in His name?

The second question I should ask is most notably “Do I value my individuality?”. This kind of question can reach as far down as Socrates asking “Who am I?”.

Is your individuality the definition of your soul? The righteous would have you believe the soul was never yours to begin with, and therefore, cannot be your individuality. They tell you that if you are born with basically nothing, and your individuality is defined by your choices in life, then your soul has to be a separate component of who you are, independent of life’s choices, since it lives on beyond corporeal death. This suggests that your individuality dies with your body and your soul becomes one with God or is separated from God, which has been accepted by the faithful for countless years. It also suggests that the soul has a beginning, but not an end. But it fails to explain why an eternal soul should be judged for disobedience of God’s laws, when on the same page, you are told that you are loved by God unconditionally. Any Christian will tell you that mankind’s judgment could never equal God’s since God knows every event of your life and God’s law is eternal. It is true that Earthly justice is most often handled by courts and lawyers, or at least a group of people trusted to be wise, who are subject to corruption or biased points of view. Even this form of leadership has evolved from the ancient beliefs that kings were gods to be worshiped as well as obeyed. But more to date, in the vast number of cultures where justice by your peers and ‘innocent until proven guilty’ are unheard of, or are unfairly ignored due to bigotry, the judgment of God will look more appealing. Does this mean that nations that practice democratic justice fairly have made the holy judgment inferior? Just how much of God’s law is found in mankind’s law?

This is why Christianity is so popular, I think. The act of unconditional forgiveness by Christ attempts to resolve the issue of God’s judgment. If, for example, a criminal commits horrible and brutal crimes, he or she may be put in prison and possibly executed for their crimes, but if they give their life to Christ while in prison, like the faithful criminal next to Jesus on the cross, their wrongdoings are all forgiven and they may spend eternity in paradise with their newfound master. But having said this, there seems to be no point in being born at all if a person can just ask for the keys to heaven whenever they are given the “good news” and feel they are ready to accept it. By that logic, the act of submitting yourself to Christ (of making that choice) seems to be the only reason you were born of flesh and blood to begin with; that this life is all just a test of faith so that your soul can have the opportunity to be reborn. Being born again possibly implies that the soul has been purified from the knowledge of good and evil (which is most likely the definition of free will, which Christians say only God should posses) inherited by Adam and Eve. Otherwise, by this logic, mankind is deemed cursed by separation at ‘spiritual birth’ by God, and can only be redeemed by Christ, causing ‘spiritual rebirth’ now in fellowship with God. Another possibility is that you are innocent until you commit your first sin. Sin is defined as disobedience against God, knowingly or unknowingly. But this implies that sin is expected and unavoidable. I choose to instead believe that the Christian interpretation is that since you are born a sinner, you must be born again to be blessed with mercy in the eyes of God. Both beliefs show an inconsistency. A born again Christian can also subsequently be corrupted, and/or lose their faith, becoming separated from God again. The act of purification could occur numerous times in this case, throughout a person’s lifetime, by way of the act of forgiveness by Christ. These inconsistencies are enough to show that the Christians’ definition of redemption is not well thought out.

The act of redemption itself seems to just be the acceptance that mankind never truly possessed free will, only the choice to obey or disobey God, and admitting this in the presence of God while admitting everything you feel guilty about to Christ as your sacrifice will open your eyes to the hidden reality that was in front of you all along and save you from the curse you were born with. “I once was blind but now I see”.

The act of salvation by Christ is not necessarily consistent throughout a person’s lifetime, as I have said. It also does not take into account those that have been given biological life but are never given the opportunity to hear and understand the Word of God. This applies to infants that die of complications in the womb or shortly after birth, the severely mentally handicapped, as well as the millions and millions of people in third-world countries the missionaries never get the opportunity to witness to. If these unfortunate multitudes are given immediate access into the kingdom of Heaven, then why must the rest of us be cursed to this test of faith? If it is because of God’s mercy that they are saved, is His mercy given to those that have been given a choice but did not understand? If they are instead, the ones cursed to spend eternity without God, how can this possibly be merciful and fair?

The act of forgiveness, to me, just appears to be the bait that lures you in. It’s probably why the Romans decided to ultimately go with Christianity as their official religion by end of the 3^rd century. They discovered over time that it was the perfect offer: Whether you’re good or bad, rich or poor, meek or powerful, you are loved by Christ and will be accepted with open arms into the kingdom of Heaven. It allowed for stability on a level equal with a form of government that could have ruled with fear and terror, which Rome had done in the past, and still allowed the ruling class to justify all their actions and do as they pleased. It seemed to work pretty well for close to 1400 years (that’s a VERY rough estimate, I grant you.) as the Holy Roman Empire expanded its borders North and Westward, killing some of the pagans and converting the rest.

To return now to the definition of the soul and what it is to be human:

What is the soul? When does it begin? I don’t need to even TOUCH the controversy that surrounds the beginning of human life. But regardless of WHEN it begins, what may be more important to ask is WHY it begins. Why should something considered eternal have a beginning? Was this idea fabricated to justify that mankind was inferior to God, who also is eternal, but has no beginning or end? If you ask the right participant in Eastern religion, they’ll tell you that life itself is the definition of the soul, and all things living are a part of it, taking new forms throughout time. It’s not until you can quiet your mind of daily chatter that this starts to become clear though, so this may be why most Westerners never get the opportunity to discover it. ;)

The decision to first define your soul and then identify the master of it is no light one. (Unless you are vain, shallow and narcissistic – a fool will find this decision easy) But a decision as seemingly vital and permanent as this leaves many, including myself, in turmoil of making a decision they are satisfied with, if for no other reason, than both of these questions (“what is my soul?” and “who is its master?”) are debatably not even relevant. What if I have no soul and am merely a complex pattern of neurons firing off in rapid succession? And if that is true, how relevant are my emotions; my feelings of love, of hate, of passion, of utter despair and loneliness? To fear asking these questions is natural and I believe, one of the reasons people reject scientific thought and turn to some form of religion so that they may get the answers they want to hear.

CHAPTER THREE: The Christian Way of Life

I think educated people that get converted to Christianity have at least two principles of logic going for them. The first comes from Einstein. Whether the ancient Word is true on all accounts or not, it’s better to be safe than sorry. The second is a bit more consoling. Christ can be a guide, a friend and a brother and has suffered unspeakable torture and returned from death when no other human being could. Sounds like a fascinating guy , someone you can always count on and be inspired by.

A lot of my thought on me being part of the congregation again had centered around these two notions in the past (not that I consider myself educated).

I want to go through eight common statements that Christians choose to accept when summing up their own personal commitment to Christ, and follow up with my reply for these statements:

1. Jesus was the Son of God and his teachings were more than just lessons to instruct the masses on how to live: they are divine insights in which I can build my life with confidence.

Is it divine insights or common moral sense based on the keen observations of an upright mentally sound citizen? Why should someone be elevated to a status “greater than human” just because they can look around and say “This isn’t right”? If you want your ideas to go down into history, you or your ideas must win the respect of every succeeding generation. It seems Christ has achieved that status in spades. There is no question that the teachings of Christ were radically pacifist in nature and unique during his lifetime. What made his teachings unique was his refusal to discriminate against anyone based on race, sex or creed, and the offering of forgiveness by God for all wrongdoing. Christ wanted all people to love God and one another as much as he loved them and as much as he loved God. Sort of a Utopian vision, and ultimately what made him a martyr. The teachings of Christ from a Protestant point of view could almost be attributed to the foundations of American democracy, except that the founders of the United States Constitution were probably more interested in free enterprise than free religion. There is still merit in these moral lessons, though. Even today, discrimination is difficult to overcome and forgiveness is an alien concept to most. It shows strength when you can achieve something above mere tolerance. You don’t have to be a Christian or a participant of any religion to understand this, though.

I will admit that many nations, including the United States, have let their morals sag into something just short of organized bedlam, with all the violence, excessive sex, drug abuse/addiction, alienation, arrogance, greed, political corruption, general tolerance of immorality, etc. Christianity serves as a pillar of inspiration in this case for what sort of morals can be used to represent common decency. But only in the sense that many traditional morals found in even liberal Christian thinking are no different than morals any fine-standing citizen could be proud of and would want to pass on to their offspring. By that, I mean that as a nation, if our morals are deemed in trouble, from any viewpoint, it would do no harm to use the teachings of Christ, as well as Mohammed, Buddha, and any number of other founders of religions still in practice, as a guide on how to interpret civilized behavior. Where do you think the golden rule comes from? “Love your neighbor as yourself.” That’s about as civilized as you can get.

2. Jesus has set the standard for right and wrong. I can use these principles as a steadfast and infallible foundation for my choices in life rather than laws and morals set by mankind, which are based on selfish and ever-changing values.

Everything I ever needed to know I learned in Kindergarten. Those folk who lack fine standing moral background (read heathens) are a product of their local upbringing. Those who manipulate the law for their own advantage (read corruption) are most likely aware that what they are doing is wrong but don’t care.

Our public acceptance of what is right and wrong varies subtly from culture to culture and over long periods of history for a culture, but enough that some cultures at any given time in history would consider something good in one culture and evil in another. Human sacrifice is one such controversy found in primitive cultures. An example of this is in the Aztec culture in the years just prior to their extermination by the Spaniards. The Aztecs believed that if they did not sacrifice a human life in the evening (I forgot exactly how many evenings per week), the sun would not rise at the expected morning hours. Since they did not want to murder their own citizens, they waged war on all the neighboring civilizations and clans so that they could take prisoners. Their prisoners of war were their ticket to the next sunrise. It is obvious that the idea of human sacrifice is more or less obsolete today, but the fact remains that at one time in history, people lived and died by such morals. The Aztecs were practicing these rituals long before the Spanish missions could spread the word of Christ, yet centuries after Christ had set his standards for living.

To say that the rules Christ laid down 2000 years ago are the de-facto moral standards is to ignore the afore-mentioned cultural differences throughout the world and throughout history. If there really IS a true standard for morality, that all people follow without question, it could only relate to our basic civilized behavior that is necessary for an individual to survive within a society. But even these morals will fluctuate somewhat. While it is true that from early in life, humans need love and attention in order to survive, this doesn’t go beyond the kind of attention baby apes get from their mothers in infancy or the companionship that monogamous mammals seek so that they may mate and perpetuate their species with one set of parents for their children. These cannot be what are defined as morals. Morals must instead be defined as rules based on generations of a given society or culture trying to live together as both a collective and as individuals in an orderly manner. If these rules did NOT change somewhat throughout human history, there would be chaos simply because mankind has changed through history.

Many of the most commonly accepted morals are simply weighted on degrees of severity.

Example: Sex between two people who are in love is ok, but sex with many partners is usually frowned upon, mostly because it’s too difficult to feel anything more than lust for them. Bigamy would imply an excessive amount of either love or lust. It seems like most religions frown on an excess of anything except love for their particular deity. Rape is a crime since there is only extreme lust and often hate from the offender, and the victim’s freedom and dignity, often their life, is threatened and violated. (i.e. the extreme case of lust combined with hate) Sexual perversion, which simply is severely excessive sexual behavior, is also considered evil by the righteous.

There are also levels of immoral tolerance and intolerance that vary greatly from culture to culture. In one society you may be smacked on the hand for a crime that in another culture you will lose it. It should all come down to choices since morals are a tool to help you make a choice that will be most beneficial for both your survival and your honor and respect among others.

Even if you only follow the finest moral upbringing you know, you still are unconsciously making moral choices that can cause harm. This is often necessary for survival and can’t be avoided.

For example, let’s say it is wrong to steal one of your neighbor’s cattle because he cannot replenish his supply and the cattle he owns and sells doesn’t belong to you; but it’s ok to go into the forest and cut down trees for shelter and heat, as God provides these things for us to use. This is fine until everyone in the village uses all the local forest and it cannot replenish itself with seeds and time to grow. The exact same concept is there. The only difference was ownership and the amount taken on an individual basis. (For God’s role in my example, the trees belong to Him and the supply of trees is determined by the cycle of life in the forest). There aren’t very many Judea-Christian morals against breeding excessively, which encourages an increase in the population; but the forests are a necessary part of the ecosystem being consumed at an accelerating rate as the human population increases. The obvious recourse in this example is for the village elders to decree more conservative use of the forest, which could be announced as a command by God, but in actuality was derived from the foresight of a wise leader concerning the village folks’ survival of another winter.

To trust in someone like the Almighty to tell you what is right and what is wrong after you’re old enough to make decisions for yourself will free you of guilt in such case that someone else is suffering the consequences of your morally rooted deeds. Some (ancient) examples? The Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, the Salem Witch Trials…. All rooted in religious paranoia and fanaticism, but founded on publicly accepted morals of one culture. On to something else then…

3. Jesus has risen from the dead and lives even today. I can speak with him on a personal basis whenever I am ready.

First of all, this tends to confuse the idea of corporeal death with spiritual death for most people. Most people have a natural intuition that something awaits us beyond the grave and we assume it’s everlasting, since both the future and ‘forever’ are concepts that we as mortals will never truly comprehend.

But more to the point, this one reminds me of Elvis. He has millions of fans from both the time in which he was alive and the time after his almost shameful death. They adore and respect him for the one thing he loved in life: his music. Most people think they love “Elvis the Man” without ever knowing him, and I’ve heard several interviews of people saying he was a nice guy but could be a little intimidating. Anyway, people get this idea of who they think he is/was based on their own creative interpretations of their observations of both the man and his music. Then there’s that crowd that swears he’s still alive, because the idea itself gives them hope and brings them great satisfaction. I like to attribute the same ideas to Jesus. There’s no way you could really know what he was like. His name wasn’t even Jesus or Christ. It was Yeshua bin Nazara. The name Christ was attributed to him by his followers to mean the messiah, after his death. His disciples were mostly smelly old fishermen that didn’t even believe half of what he said at the time. Most of his disciples didn’t even want to be part of the new Christian religion either. Saul/Paul is mostly responsible for giving the Christian religion a chance to survive because of his ties with Roman authority, and he ultimately died in prison fighting for his beliefs. Most historians agree that the miracles performed by Christ that cannot easily be explained (calming the storm, raising the dead, healing the sick) never happened. The events were falsely recorded by the authors of the gospels in the hopes that they could convert more pagans to their cause by inserting miracles performed by Christ that were similar to ones recorded in pagan religions, but had a more pacifist tone. This was during the times Christians were looked upon with disdain and ridicule by the majority of people living in or near Palestine. The more people that could be converted, the better their reputation as a significant group became.

You have to make the decision whether or not Christ is your savior based on things people have been passing down for millennia. Their interpretations of other people’s interpretations. It is an act of pure faith, and in my eyes, this stems from something deep inside yourself, that relates to the most intimate and rudimentary traits of your being. It’s a decision that shakes you to the core, and most of the time, is for the cause of bettering yourself for a greater good. It’s a noble trait found in most everyone, I think.

As for talking to Christ like a friend and also like a father, it’s in our nature to want to have someone to look up to and be inspired by. If you can find no enlightenment and inspiration in your travels, the first natural step is to turn to someone you think can. I tend to think it was there all the time, you just need the right frame of mind to find it, and the life experiences to interpret it. If you look at all cultures in many time frames, you can plainly see that a randomly picked handful have a different path to righteousness. There’s more than one way to find harmony within yourself.

4. Since Jesus conquered death, he can show me the way to eternal life.

I assume this means eternal life with God, not separated from God, which I always assumed what Hell really is. Several people, like Saul and James, were converted to Christianity after apparently witnessing the risen Jesus, who had a mission for them from the afterlife. They seemed to accept these holy visitations without question and completely changed their life thereafter, so this begs the question, why didn’t they reject the notion of being visited by Christ, and why doesn’t Christ visit anyone in this way anymore? The first choice is probably because in modern times, people would think they were nuts. In the time of Christ, something like this was more believable. Now, this is something that goes back to that intimacy I spoke of earlier. I like to think that the apparitions are purely symbolic and men like Saul and James just interpreted their new life turn-around experience, inspired by the WORDS of Christ, as a vision from the Son of God. It made them really popular and influential with the church, I’m sure, and gave them a place of authority over those that merely prayed to Christ instead of being blessed with a mission from Heaven. Both of these men died for their beliefs, which is to be expected. For a decision as serious as that one, once you’ve found a life-changing solution you are truly happy with, it IS worth dying for from your personal point of view, I think, whether it’s true or not. It’s all in the eye of the beholder. My personality is such that I haven’t, as yet, found much of anything worth dying for. ;)

5. Jesus has the power of God, therefore he has the ability to miraculously transform me into a faithful servant of the Lord.

While it’s true that everything cannot be explained away by science, and never will, to live a pious life and face temptation daily is not something I would consider miraculous. The act of submitting your soul is perhaps, for some. But the former seems to just take daily meditation and prayer. These are activities which calm the mind and prepare a person for life’s ups and downs. Nearly every religion has practices for this in a large variety of ways. If this miraculous transformation implies someone you would never expect to become one of the faithful, I should remind you of my observations up to this point: The act of defining yourself, your soul, your priorities, and all the satisfaction weighed in contrast with all the guilt that comes with those intimate questions: all this can be triggered by someone merely passing judgment on things you may not have even thought of before. It’s amazing how much personal guilt and remorse for one’s actions, which are NOT divine or holy in any shape or form, can change a person’s attitude, and their outlook on life. This is especially true for converts to Christianity, as they are first told to feel guilty for their sins and then told they don’t have to continue feeling guilty as long as they join the club. And if that doesn’t work, the second phase is to remind the heathens of their inevitable mortality. ie. they are vulnerable. This type of brainwashing is the daily work of those considered righteous and the most devout.

6. Jesus has experienced both terrible loss and unbearable suffering. Therefore, in times of turmoil, which he has warned are inevitable in a world tainted by sin, he can bring comfort and encouragement.

Sounds like a scare tactic to me. The suffering Christ experienced the day he was crucified is very melodramatic, but Christians want you to believe the TRUE suffering he went through, even after hours of torture, humiliation and finally bleeding to death while suffocating, took place in Hell, and this short time that Jesus was separated from his Father was what paid for all of your sins. Surely his suffering was no greater than those that will dwell in the deepest bowels of Hell, who will have an eternity to wish they had made the correct decision in life for one forever-repeating instant. Show me what the Bible has to say about suffering beyond the corporeal state and you’ll find nothing that isn’t symbolic of simply eternal life without God. So if this is what Christ suffered, then I don’t sympathize, because at least he was able to ultimately return to his Father’s side. We as mankind get to stay there for eternity if we do not swear our life to him? He should still be there paying the enormous debt he seems to owe those that don’t care if he even exists. New souls are being born at an accelerating rate as we enter the new millennium. If he is to also pay the penance for all the sins of mankind yet to be born, his trip should have ended in Hell. Oh, but then he never would have come back from the dead and no one would really believe in him. Where’s the real sacrifice here?

As far as a world of turmoil and turbulence goes, that is the way of things. The way of nature. The way of our cultures. The way of the universe. The never-ending battle of chaos versus order. Good versus Evil, as some like to interpret it. Sin is only a crumb in the big enchilada. Sin is based on right and wrong, which I have observed isn’t 100% standardized.

7. Jesus loves me and wants only the best for me. This means I have nothing to lose and can only benefit from committing my life to him.

This idea suggests that your individuality and your soul is nothing. Nothing to lose, that is. It suggests that Christians have rationalized they do not need to make moral decisions anymore because they have someone else to do it for them. They must now consult the Almighty through prayer and reverence and forever reject the notion that they could ever make proper moral decisions for themselves. Sad. My opinion, anyway.

8. Jesus has claimed to be God, the Word made flesh. No leader of any other major religion has even pretended to be God. As my Creator, he rightfully deserves my allegiance, obedience, and worship.

Isn’t this a bit old fashioned? Sounds pretty noble, and some people like that, I guess. Saying Jesus is your creator implies that the Father and Son are really one and the same, when the Gospels go out of their way to point out that one is the path to righteousness and the other simply is righteousness. How about a little consistency? Early Christians had to invent the Holy Trinity just to make sure they had all the bases covered, and the clergy almost decided not to include the Holy Ghost in the Gospels. I also don’t agree that no other religious leader has claimed to be God. Krishna, for one, claimed to be the son of Lord Shiva. Jesus is just the most well known one. There is also debate among historians if Jesus ever even said this. The only Gospel where Jesus says he is the only way to know and love God is in John, which some historians believe was almost rejected by the clergy in the late second century because it had too many Gnostic characteristics(what you might consider a cult nowadays). It supposedly was accepted due to a vote and possibly because it was already so popular with Christians, now in the ruling class of Rome. Would you want to argue with that?

CONCLUSION: Breaking Free

I come from South Texas, a formidable slice of the so-called Bible belt. There’s a lot of religious activity over here, mostly Protestant in alignment. The truth of the matter is, no matter where they live, a lot of people turn to a religion of some kind because they are so unhappy with their lives. They need an escape and answers to big questions. They need comforting, inspiration and inner peace. They don’t want to be afraid of the unknown. They wish to have hope and happiness and a sense of purpose. When we as a species stopped having to search for food to survive, the need to evolve turned into the sense of purpose, which is probably what spawned the question “Who am I”? So we all must delve deep into our hearts at some point in our lives and really ask some serious questions.

I have explored enough philosophical possibilities to see a lot of foolishness and inconsistencies in the Christian faith and in the Bible. Not just stuff I didn’t agree with, but things that could be interpreted nine ways to Sunday. One literal example I always give is that when a word is translated from Hebrew to Latin and then to English as ‘Wicca’ or ‘Witch’, it is interpreted in Hebrew as ‘Poisoner’ or someone who murders with poison, and not the witch in the sense we think of as being a servant of evil. I even noticed early on that certain things in the Gospels occur in different places in time or tell a completely different story altogether. Jesus’ altercation at the money changer’s tables is chronologically different throughout the Gospels. Each Gospel gives a different story of what the women at the tomb did and what they saw there. That’s only two examples.

My own quest for the divine is one of mixed emotions on trying to marry reason with feeling. I gave up on the search for “truth” quite some time ago, as truth is only as clear as your own interpretation. I never have gone for anything without a gut feeling. Without it just feeling “right”. I’ve always felt that in the end, surrendering my life to God and Jesus was not quite right, and never really felt right with myself about the decision, each time I decided to surrender myself. Did I back out each time? Most times I did. But when I really meant it, my first reaction each and every following day naturally was to question it and make sure I did the right thing. That’s part of my personality, even for things I DO believe in. I would always succumb to doubt by way of carefully weighing both sides of my confusion, and rationally concluding that my decision was naive and made in haste. It could have been fear at first, but the result has always been the same. If it was only a matter of trust, with all of its simplicity, I would have already submitted myself to Christ based on the assumption that all arguments against faith in God came from fear or the influence of evil, instead of doubt brought on by rational thought. If all my reasons for not trusting God are influences of evil, of the devil and of his influences on the world, then things are a lot more black and white than I perceive them to be. Those gray areas my logic seem to point out are lies and will ultimately destroy me. But somehow, I don’t think this is the case. I was never able to even completely trust those who claim to know God and love him utterly as being anything more than nice people with ‘good intentions’. I have yet to hear an interpretation of the Gospel that has convinced me I am truly free by showing obedience to an entity that can only exist because of unconditional belief. Christianity in particular has always failed to impress me by saving the “good news” for the end of the sermon. This news attempts to use my own guilt to convince me I am hopeless without a guide from the heavens. That I was born with a curse of evil but it wasn’t my fault. That I may be redeemed if only I contribute to a group of people that, if not for Constantinople and the first Pope, would now be an ancient cult. That the day is coming soon, most likely in my lifetime, when Christ will sweep me away from this insane world to a place of peace and tranquility, and leave all the heathens behind to destroy one another in a most unpleasant fashion. What I wish they would add is that this group, who has waged wars for centuries, killing all those that would not believe and converting the rest, has the blessing of God because the Europeans have long since conquered most of the world and their morals are right and just and should be accepted as timeless. They seem to accept this long before getting to the part about the Rapture. Perhaps if someone can convince me otherwise, I will rethink the whole deal. Who knows?

Try not to get the idea that I think I’m in complete control of my own destiny, because there’s too many outside influences both environmental and subconscious. But my freedom and choices in life are something I treasure, and I won’t give them up to something that has never proven it has complete control over me and my own destiny. When such an entity manifests itself and forces me to change, then I will do so only to survive. For those of you living in a country where you cannot express and practice this kind of freedom, you must understand that you have been placed in a set of circumstances from birth where those that dominate you have the final say. I am thankful to live in a country where people have given their lives for over two centuries to allow people to think freely. Perhaps if you live in such a country, you should consider a geographical relocation, if that’s at all possible, if you agree with any of the thoughts I have laid out in this document.

Many of the questions I’ve been asking also are of little consequence, since they are most likely questions no one person possesses the wisdom to answer. I’m pretty sure I’ve already found my inner peace (which is what’s important) and it has little to do with the creator of life.

If all of this is wrong, and when I die, I’m doomed to spend an eternity without God just because I’m over analytical and my deeds judged with fire leave nothing but ash when I stand before the heavenly host, I’ll have the satisfaction of spending eternity knowing it was MY decision and not God’s. I can be confident of the fact the he created me that way, then chose to jettison me from the kingdom of Heaven anyway, never showing me His enlightenment in a way that I could personally accept and understand. I’d like to be as far away as possible from a pompous, arrogant, narcissistic, extremely jealous tyrant that looks down at me with empathic benevolence so long as I follow His rules. If I was created simply to be obedient, then given the option of free will just to give the ‘correct’ choice more meaning, then God is a very sick little prankster in addition to all of that. I’d much rather stay in Hell, where turbulence and malevolence at least rival the stillness found in those that yearn for a permanent escape from it. If I must truly say goodbye to everything, including the man I once was and those that I love, and forever be an occupant of the eternal pit of misery, death, sorrow and loneliness, then I’m not afraid to face it. In death, if I have no physical body, then there will be no pain. If I yearn for nothing and value nothing, then I will be free of everything. Beyond that, if I AM still human at that point, I’ll do what all humans do. I will adapt. I will make the best of the situation.