Caution:  this writing may be very offensive to some.  Especially to devout Christians.  It is not my wish to offend anyone.  I rarely bring these opinions into a social situation for that reason.  However, these are my strongest beliefs.  Also, this book is in it's infancy, and many of the statistics I am quoting from memory and they have not been thoroughly researched.  Some of the chapters are simply unfinished even as an outline, so keep that in mind.  If you know of any websites I can use to get the facts, please share them with me.  And as always feel free to E-mail me at stanhuffman@charter.com as I'm sure there will be some differing opinions here.

     Imagine the year 2020. What will it be like? With the capacity of data storage doubling every 18 months or so, we will be able to have data available to us at thousands of times the quantity and hundreds of times faster than we have now. And the power we have now is tremendous! Within 10 years, we could make it our goal, as a World Society, to have this information available free to every living person on earth. Especially to the populations of the oppressed and poverty stricken countries. It will cost almost nothing by that time so it seems likely to me that it could and should happen.
    In ten years it might be possible for Internet access to be available from a pocket calculator sized or even a Dick Tracy wrist watch type of receiver. Something that might cost $10.00 in today’s money. It would be possible for the free countries of the world to flood the populations of the oppressed countries with such devices so that they would have all of this information available to them.
    What will happen when everybody on Earth has all of the information that we possess, as a race, at their fingertips and at little or no cost? What long term effect will this constantly accelerating knowledge have on our society? Will myths that blatantly contradict hard scientific evidence be able to survive in a world so well educated?
    I have a vision of a future society so nearly perfect that every individual has the same opportunities for success. As we meld into one World Society prejudice could forever be flushed from our hearts. Information must surely be the answer to our number one challenge, population control. Politically motivated, and prejudice laws could be stricken from our law books, and all the hidden truths that should be self-evident could be self evident. Dictatorships that cannot control the information available to their populations will surely fail.
    I have a vision of a population that can take control of the direction it travels. A population that can embrace the values of genuine righteousness and leave behind forever the unfairness of so-called morals imposed by those who wish to clone, convert or control others. It is my opinion that all these positive changes will take place eventually. I would like to help expedite these changes so that I may see them in my lifetime.
    I challenge all humans to look at the hard facts and to gaze deep into your minds. Challenge all of the beliefs you hold so dear. If you find it hard to accept new ideas and change, ask your self why. Do you resist change because of an external influence, or do you resist change because you can find absolutely no evidence to dispute your present beliefs?

    This section is, without a doubt, the most sensitive of subjects I wish to cover. I have delayed for many years this writing simply because I did not wish to offend people that are dear to me. I am a very spiritual person. My spirituality is, however, within my own mind. "I" am the ruler of my life. The consequences of my life are reliant upon my decisions and no-one else’s. I don't see a need to project my faith and spirituality outside of my own mind and body.
    As I see so many times, the truth is so blatantly obvious that it’s hard for me to comprehend that there is any need for discussion. For the purpose here, I am going to talk only about Christianity as I know very little about any other religion. I do think, however, that my thoughts apply to them all.
    Outside of the printed word of the Bible and other religious texts, and the fact that millions of people base their lives around some form of religion, there is absolutely not one shred of evidence to support the factuality of any of these religious myths. In fact, every ounce of hard scientific knowledge that we have ever discovered indicates that all religions and gods were created by humans to suit their own particular needs for whatever time period they happened to be occupying. Yet so many people live and die by their mythological beliefs.
    I strongly believe that every person is entitled to their own spirituality. I also feel it is paramount that we all respect each others beliefs. The number one problem I have with religious beliefs, outside of the fact that they are mythology,  is that parents, religious society and clergy take innocent children and brainwash them into thinking the way they want them to. A child hears at a very young age from the people that he or she loves and depends upon the most that if he does not learn to think the way they want him to, he or she will spend an eternity burning in the fiery furnace of hell. What a cruel thing to tell a young child. In my opinion, it borders on child abuse. Let’s see some proof before you start indoctrinating young minds with such far-fetched ideas! What do you think children are going to think if their parents threaten them with propaganda like that? If these religions were true, wouldn’t every human just naturally gravitate towards them without having to be scared senseless? How about raising the children in an unbiased environment and letting them chose for themselves as adults.
    The number two problem I have with religion is their well documented past of suppressing scientific education. You may be familiar with Galileo’s imprisonment. After he invented the telescope and after years of gazing at the stars, he embraced the Capurnicum theory that the Earth was not the center of the universe. The Christians promptly placed him under house arrest. One of the most brilliant thinkers of his time, stifled, simply because he defied one of the current dearly held myths. Some are also familiar with the famous Charles Darwin "Monkey Trials" where Darwin's theory of evolution was under attack for proposing such a far fetched theory that we humans were descended from simpler life forms. If the Christians had their way now, evolution would still be stricken from the science classes of our education system. Evolution should have been a staple of our public science education 100 years ago but has been suppressed by the Christians and other mystics until just recently.
    The number three problem I have with Christianity is their promise of an after life. I want to see some proof before you start promising something that huge. There is simply no reason to believe that we have another life after this one on Earth. Sure, it’s a comforting thought to dream that we are all going to live forever, but it is a silly notion. It also fulfills the vindictive side of our psyches to pretend that those of us who do not repent and conform will spend an eternity suffering in Hell.
    Evolution is a fact. Period.
    If you don’t believe that humans evolved from lower life forms, you are either uninformed, prejudiced or not intelligent enough to understand the facts. If you believe in life after death and evolution then you must believe that every bacteria, every virus, every blade of grass, every tree, every insect, every bird, every mammal, as well as every human has a soul and a chance for an eternal life. The evolution of conscience thought was a very gradual thing and we, as humans, cannot separate ourselves from our evolutionary past.
    Right now, I would like you to take a test. Look at this picture of head gear for 5 seconds and then think of what it reminds you of.

     Most would say that this is a Viking helmet. The truth is, that Vikings never wore anything like this. Why do we relate Vikings to the horned helmet? Mythology. Somebody at some point in time, long after the Vikings existed, had some motivation for promoting this myth.
    Finish the following sentence.
    "It’s freezing out, you’d better dress warm or you’ll catch a..........".
    Did you say "cold"? For decades we have known that you don’t catch a cold by being cold. The common cold is caused by contracting a virus, usually by hand contact or by inhaling the virus into the respiratory system. For centuries it was thought that this common ailment was caused by being cold because it struck much more frequently during the winter months. Truth is that the virus spreads more easily during the colder seasons because people spend a lot more time indoors in close proximity to each other. Almost everyone has had a cold in the middle of the summer. Yet even those that are enlightened to the facts sometimes believe that a cold is caused by being cold. Why?? Because old myths don’t die easily. Especially if they were taught to you by someone you have a great deal of respect for.
    Now, take an old myth that was strictly preached to you from birth by the people you respect the most, add the reinforcement of a huge group of society, maybe even the overwhelming majority, add a multi-million dollar facility on a corner not far from your house, a weekly ritual that may be your most important social event, throw in the promise of an eternal afterlife filled with bliss and you have a mind set that is hard to change.
    Let’s explore the scientific side of the coin for a moment. The Christians claim that the universe was created in six days with the seventh day a day of rest. That God flew around fabricating everything at his whim with the stroke of a hand or the snap of a finger. No mention of dinosaurs or an expanding universe or anything that we now know to be consistent with the physical laws of nature. Billions upon billions of examples of fossil evidence point to only one theory. Evolution. Yet there are still individuals who claim to be wise that deny this notion. Looking outward towards the cosmos we find, with today’s technology, even more evidence that suggests that our universe is an ever expanding and changing infinity that is millions of times older than the Christians want to acknowledge.
    Think about it. If the Christian myth were true, God would have had to place all of this fossil evidence underground and all of those stars and galaxies and planets in place, and set them all in motion in just such a way so as to intentionally deceive us. What kind of twisted cruel God would do such a thing? (Carl Sagan Quote from Johny Carson episode) That type of deception doesn’t sound like a "test of faith" to me (that’s the response I’ve gotten from some I have posed that scenario to).
    The fact is, there was never an Adam and Eve, no parting of the sea, no walking on water, no Jesus rising from the dead, no staff turning into a snake or any of that magical phenomenon that the Bible claims to have happened. The physical laws of nature are absolute and cannot be broken! Not then. Not now. Not ever. Yet millions of otherwise intelligent people believe in these myths. On one hand, perception is reality. In other words, if you believe in something, it exists. If nowhere else, in your own mind. There is a point, however, when intelligent minds have to draw a line and ask "Is this possible?"
    Now let’s take a look at what may have motivated mankind to invent religions several thousand years ago. I say religions in the plural sense, because there have been hundreds maybe thousands of religious beliefs created by humans since we developed language and the ability to communicate with each other and pass our thoughts to the next generation. For starters, people have always wanted to know where they came from. So it was convenient for them to make up myths about their beginnings. Then, when the pain of losing a loved one was unbearable, they felt compelled to conceive of a place where the departed went for an eternal life. A place where they could all be together again someday and live in ecstasy forever. A very comforting thought for a mother dealing with the death of her young child. Then a code of conduct was needed to counteract some of our still lingering natural instinctive behaviors. Behaviors that were so necessary for our species to survive through a time when we were not quite as easily able to provide for ourselves. Behaviors not necessarily appropriate for us once we had become more intelligent and civilized. A very strict code was needed that promised an eternity of unimaginable suffering to anyone who denied this belief.
    Behavioral evolution is a phrase I will be using. To me it means the evolving of our instinctive behaviors. Things like suckling and migrating. Behaviors that are absolutely essential to our survival and passed to the next generation in our genetic makeup. Let’s take a look at the time line involved.
    For millions of years while we evolved from little mouse like shrews at the approximate time the dinosaurs ruled the earth right up to the critical point in time where humans developed language, our behavioral evolution and our level of intelligence probably stayed, relatively speaking, on about the same upward path. But when we developed language and other communication skills our intelligence took off like a rocket, leaving our behavioral evolution, which is strongly tied to our physical evolution, far behind. As our intelligence snowballed, it far outpaced the slow movement of evolution. The length of time from when we developed communication skills until the present, maybe tens of  thousands of years, is a mere finger snap in the time frame of our complete evolution. The result is an extremely advanced mind trapped in a brain that, in some ways, still thinks it’s on the African plains hunting and gathering.
    Survival in a hostile environment dictates that your main concerns be things like eating, not getting eaten and reproducing. Although these concerns are taken for granted or even irrelevant in our cushy high tech world now, for 99% of the time of our development these basic concerns were paramount to our survival. No-one was there to teach us, they had to be instinctive, passed down to each new generation automatically. Many more perished than survived. Those that excelled at these survival tactics had a much better chance and their behaviors bred through.
    When you are a furry animal trying to find your next meal, you take whatever you can find. You don’t care if it belongs to some other animal you just take it and get the hell out of there. Intestinal possession is 100% of the law... Have you ever seen something you really wanted and thought you could get away with taking it without having to earn it in any way? Of course you have because you still have part of that hungry furry animal’s brain deep inside your head.
    Most folks spend some time battling fear and paranoid thoughts... If you are forced to venture out into an open meadow to find a drink of water and there might be a lion out there thinking about having you for his next meal, you damn well better have a good supply of fear on tap until you can again find safety.
    Of course I don’t think that we should go around stealing things or that we should have to be looking over our shoulders in fear all the time. I do think that it is important to understand why these thoughts are in our heads. Surely truth and knowledge are the formula needed to channel these instincts in a positive direction.
    The point I am trying to make here is that the Christian faith sees these inappropriate thoughts as the work of Satan, an angel fallen from God’s grace. An evil being of tremendous power who seeks to corrupt all of humanity. In fact, these thoughts were at one time crucial to our survival and we would not be here today if not for them.
    In our new information rich world, it has become impossible for all but the most fanatic to take the writings of the Bible literally. I see most of those that claim to be Christians having sort of a wishy-washy interpretation. I challenge Christians to take a close look at what the Bible is actually saying and ask themselves if they truly do believe or if they are just following the crowd.
    I know that many people get a tremendous boost from their religious beliefs, and I’m all for that. I don’t wish to deprive anyone of that. One major problem is that so many are very closed minded about other peoples beliefs. So extreme is their prejudice that many wars have been waged over just such differences. As military technology continues to accelerate and the smaller more religiously fanatic countries gain nuclear ICBM capability, the concern becomes a matter of survival for our entire planet. It would be a giant step forward if everyone could respect everyone else’s beliefs. Quite frankly, it is my opinion that we would be much better off with no such mythological beliefs at all. The sooner we can see things in a more realistic light, the better.

    Most fear has become obsolete in our society. Especially with the standard of living that we enjoy in the U. S. A. Like so many of the thoughts that were important to our survival in the hostile environment of the wild, fear is, for the most part, outdated. I’m not talking about the kind of fear you feel when you think you’re about to fall off a cliff. I’m speaking of the fear that seeks to corrupt our most personal thoughts. With technology, we have rid ourselves of the perils ever present in the wild. But in the time frame of our complete development, this new freedom just took place a few seconds ago. We are still afraid of many things that no longer exist. There is little we can do about it until our brains evolve out of it. That may take hundreds or even thousands of years. All of this unused surplus fear has to do something, so it creeps into our inner beings and prevents us from doing many of the things we would like to do. For the purposes of this writing, I am going to use the phrase "negative fear" to refer to this useless, outdated, surplus fear. "Positive fear" is the phrase I will be using to describe the fear that is still useful to us.
    So, how do we tell the difference between positive and negative fear? On one hand, it’s quite simple, positive fear promotes a positive result and negative fear promotes a negative result. However, the dividing line can be a bit murky at times and the results are not always easily predictable. I believe that it’s important for each individual to look at each situation and decide which fears are warranted and which are probably going to promote a negative result. Even though I usually have no problem differentiating between the two, I often have a great deal of difficulty keeping the negative fear out. I’m pretty sure that it’s going to bring a negative result, but I still remember when I was a furry animal. You can never be too afraid when you’re out in the open meadow.
    Once we learn to identify the good and bad fear, it should become easier to chase the negative fear out of our minds. But there is so much paranoia lingering in our minds that, for many of us, it’s a difficult task. Some people don’t seem to have a big problem with fear, and they may actually be better suited to our world now and into the future. But I can’t help but think that at one time, in the wild, they may have been the first ones eaten by the lion. The worry warts must have fared much better. Maybe humans will evolve a more carefree attitude in the future. If so, I wonder how long it will take.

    Prejudice is the main cancer of our society. It comes in many destructive shapes and forms. White against black, Christian against Moslem, American against Japanese, short-hair against long, man against woman and the list goes on forever. I’ve had my stomach full of prejudice and I have no tolerance for anymore. If we could turn all the prejudice in the world off like a switch today, by tomorrow our race would be in much better shape. In 30 days we would be well on our way to forming a more perfect society. In twenty years the life of every human on earth would be enhanced in a positive way. One hundred years after the prejudice switch is turned off forever, our descendants could live in a world filled with opportunity and happiness. It should be so simple to turn off the switch, but it’s not. What is it that makes us fear and mistrust each other when there simply is no reason to. Is it once again a symptom of our behavioral evolution lagging so far behind the advancement of our intelligence?
    The word prejudice means, literally, to prejudge someone. To come to a conclusion about that person or group of people before you have all the facts. In our society today it seems that having all the facts is still no prerequisite for fair treatment. Even when the truth is made crystal clear to many folks they still will not act in a reasonable manner. What are the driving forces behind prejudice and how do we get them turned around? What is your excuse for prejudging your fellow humans. Those who harbor prejudice towards others contribute to the demise of our race. The strong individuals who can see through this fear induced way of thinking and rise above it hold the future in their hands.

    The drug laws that we tolerate in this country are without a doubt the number one injustice of our land. They have been put in place by a population that is uninformed and prejudice. The facts and statistics are right in the open for any concerned person to review. As usual, the truth is so blatantly obvious that it seems almost silly that there should be any debate. 
    In this country, inhabited for the most part by Europeans, we allow and even glorify the two chemicals that were accepted by our European ancestors. Alcohol and tobacco. I am going to refer to all chemicals, legal or illegal, as chemicals. Don’t think for one second that tobacco and alcohol are anything different than marijuana, cocaine or any of the other illegal chemicals that are available to the public. In fact, tobacco kills about 300,000 people every year in the USA and alcohol kills about 30,000 humans each year in our country. All illegal drugs combined account for about 3,000 deaths per year in the United States. A large percentage of the deaths caused by illegal chemicals can be attributed to the fact that these substances are manufactured in basements and warehouses by people that are unaccountable for their products.
    Before I go any further, I want to make a few points here. I have no problem with the DUI laws. I feel that when you get behind the wheel, you should be in complete control of your senses and able to handle to your best ability whatever situation arises. I also think that we should make it our goal to become a chemical free society. I feel that it is paramount that we break the chain by doing everything possible to keep our children chemical free. I don’t blame law enforcement or any part of the executive branch, they are simply people that are doing their jobs to the best of their abilities. In fact, I believe that the ridiculous state of our drug laws drag the publics opinion of our law enforcement officers, who should be viewed with the utmost respect, down to an embarrassing level. Consenting adults in an adult only private situation should be able to do whatever they choose to do without fearing legal repercussions. And finally, distributing chemicals to minors should still carry strict penalties.
    So, our goal should be to keep all chemicals (remember now, chemicals means legal and illegal substances) out of our children’s lives, without infringing on the basic rights of privacy that consenting adults in a private adult only situation deserve. How do we accomplish this? I don’t mean to sound repetitive, but it seems so obvious to me. Everything seems obvious when you have the facts, carry no prejudice and believe in no myths.
    To a great extent, kids do what their parents do. Any parent who uses chemicals cannot be serious about raising a chemical free child. And even the parents that don’t use chemicals are forced to raise their children in a society that glorifies chemical use. When was the last time you watched a NASCAR race? You know, the Winston cup series. As in Winston cigarettes. The chemical that kills 300,000 people a year in our country. Why not call it the heroin cup? After all heroin only kills about 1500 people a year in our great country. That’s only one half of one percent of the deaths caused by tobacco. And to make the tobacco story even more absurd, add the fact that our tax dollars are subsidizing the poor helpless tobacco farmers in their off years when they can’t make a good profit. 
    Have you ever been to a baseball game at Coors field in Denver? Let’s take all of our children to a baseball game in a stadium named after an alcohol product. Alcohol only kills about 30,000 a year. Not that many more than died in Vietnam. Let’s change the name to Methamphetamine Memorial Athletic Complex. Compared to the 30,000 lives lost to alcohol each year, meth just claims a few percent.

THE FUTURE IS YOURS

    Your future belongs to you. No one else can decide how your life will be. It is up to you to take a serious look at who you want to be and where you are heading. Question every single thing that you think about no matter how important or insignificant. Insist on facts and hard evidence. Don’t let any person or group of people strong arm you into thinking a certain way. Make your own choices.
     It is especially important to question the ancient beliefs that were taught you by people that you are or were very close to. Although their motives were almost certainly pure, the information they would have needed to make the correct assessments was simply not available to them. You may be very unwilling to let go of a tradition that is so much a part of your heritage even though you have some serious questions about it’s legitimacy.
    You can choose to be a positive thinker and take the "higher ground" when dealing with those who speak and act from a position of less stability. The power of positive thinking is easily seen and infinitely successful. It flowers in every direction from it’s source. The destructive force of negative thinking, on the other hand, is finite and leads to only one destination.
    The time is now to talk about new and old ideas with your friends, families and casual acquaintances. Twenty years from now things will certainly be much different. Maybe life could be a thousand times better than it is today.

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