Religion on Mars

There has been much heated discussion among aspiring Martians about religion and its place in Martian society. Most of those who have expressed an opinion in the discussion have tended to fall into the group which I shall call "Keep it to yourself". There may have been a person here or there among the theistic religions who has said that they will spread the word of their religion, but if so I haven't seen it. I have seen a few of those following Atheism who have been rather insistent about forbidding from Mars all religion - except for theirs.

Full disclosure: I do believe that Atheism is as much a religion as Christianity, Islam, or any other. Atheists tend to very loudly proclaim that there is no God - a statement which they can prove no more than a Christian can prove that there is a God. If you're going to be intellectually honest about it then you can't really be anything but agnostic, in my opinion. Naturally I am not that brand of intellectually honest. I am honest enough to say that I can't prove it to anyone else but I believe that there is a God anyway.

Fuller disclosure: I self-identify as a syncretist who practices Christianity. Religious people tend to emphasize their differences and thereby have splintered the world into many warring factions. To misquote a RUSH lyric (I swear that this is how I heard the song for three years - until I finally looked at a lyric sheet for Armor and Sword) "Battle flags are flown at the feet of a god of love." The actual lyric is "god unknown" but my misquote makes the point better, and the point is this: I looked around at all of these people making WAR in the name of God, and claiming that theirs is a God of Love and Peace and I realized that it was completely absurd on the face of it. I also realized that while they emphasized their differences, most of them had quite a few similarities. After hearing and thinking about the Buddhist version of the old parable of the elephant I began to believe that if one could study all of the world's religions and find the points where they coincide one might come up with a more clear picture of God. I've studied some on other religions, but I claim to practice Christianity because I still haven't gotten it all figured out yet.

That said, tonight there was a debate held at the Creation Museum between Bill Nye - on the side of science (and Atheism) and Ken Ham - on the side of creationism (and fundamentalist Christianity). I had no interest in this debate - I've been involved in it more times than I can count, I know all of the arguments that will be brought to bear, and I don't want to hear it any more. My personal point-of-view on debate/argument/discussion has always been that the audience doesn't matter. I'm in a discussion to hear someone else's views, have mine heard, and come to a consensus, even if the only consensus can be to agree to disagree. Because of this viewpoint, I find debates like tonight's quite pointless - not only are the debaters not going to listen to each other, but in this case the audience won't even really listen. My twitter feed was full of commentary on the debate and the only tweet that I found the least interesting was when @MZHemingway said "While I'm enjoying #creationdebate, neither Ham nor Nye's debate strategy seems terribly persuasive to those not already in their camps."

The question that I have never had answered satisfactorily is why there was ever a debate on this subject at all. Don't get me wrong, I know exactly why, I just don't know how people didn't see their mistake and quit arguing. The trouble is that the group of Christians who believe that scripture should be interpreted "literally" (I use quotes around that because they only want people to use THEIR "literal" interpretation) are trying to make The Bible answer a question that it was never designed to answer. Science is concerned with how things work, in this case how the universe came to be. Those stories in The Bible about how the universe was created (yes, there are two creation stories in Genesis - with different details) are not meant to answer the question how, they are meant to answer the question who did it all - a question that science couldn't care any less about. Scientists got suckered into an argument that the other side had set the boundaries of and fundamentalist Christians have steadfastly refused to use observation and reason. It's a no win situation.

I tend to have double standards about most things in life. Usually I have a standard of behavior for myself and one for everyone else. I can get away with this because my standards for myself are almost always higher than my standards for other people. Religion on Mars is yet another issue where I adhere to a glaring double standard. I will practice my own religion as I wish to without intruding on anyone else. I won't bring it up for discussion, I won't perform any prayers or rituals in front of other people, I will be firmly in the "Keep it to yourself" group. On the other hand, if someone else wants to talk about their religion it doesn't bother me. I will gladly enter the discussion. I actually hope that there are people on Mars with different views and experiences than I have who are willing to share with me. If it should become obvious that such discussions are becoming useless then I can always stop participating.

Thanks for listening

Olympic Dreams

This will be less a blog, and more of a statement about how and why I choose to strive for the goals which are my vision of life ahead. I recognize that life and our actions within it are often a result of seemingly random things coming together at just the right time. This Olympian's Manifesto is a result of just such a confluence of a few things in my life recently.

Perhaps the first thing that I should explain is why the title Olympic Dreams. One of the random coincidences of life is that just now, when we - the would-be settlers of Mars - are beginning to work toward our goal, the Winter Olympic Games are about to start again. the Olympic Games are named after Olympia - the site in Greece where the ancient Olympic Games were held, but the name calls to mind Mount Olympus, home of the Greek Gods of mythology. This, in turn, calls to mind the Mount Olympus which was named for the Greek peak, but which resides several million miles away on an entirely different planet in our solar system. Where Olympic athletes might be said to aspire to ascend Mount Olympus to dine with the gods, we potential Martians aspire to live in the shadow of Mount Olympus (quite literally. the likely landing site for Mars One's colony is quite near to Olympus Mons) an entire world away.

The first thing to impact my life to begin these Olympic Dreams was not the Olympic Games, of course, the first piece of the puzzle was myself. I'm just a guy, no different from billions of others on the planet, except that I am what Michael P. Kube-McDowell described as a starhead in his book The Quiet Pools: "There was something simultaneously delightful and pathetic about the starheads. They knew the schedule for the center's one LTO runway better than most allied staff, knew the difference between a Pelican and its near-twin Martin Rendezvous, knew the nine satlands and the governor of the Mars colony and the latest news and gossip from Ur. They came to the ob deck at Johnson Field as a solemn pilgrimage and then turned into wistful wishful children, noses pressed to the window on a rainy day. ... The starheads were obsessed with dreams they could never fulfill, and so came to touch with their eyes the only piece of that dream they could reach."

The first thing to come into contact with the incredibly fertile ground which is myself was, of course, Mars One. Mr. Lansdorp, Mr. Wielders, and the rest of the Mars One team has brought forth a plan of such complex simplicity that dreamers like myself can clearly see that it cannot be stopped and its unstoppable necessity makes the possibility of my Olympian dreams - which had been cold and dead for decades past - coming true. Mars One has relit the fires that propel me and changed my life from a pleasant plodding from comfortable  home life to comfortable work life to comfortable band life and so on until I comfortably and pleasantly plodded into the grave into a life with passion and purpose again.

The thing that caused me to write this out for the world to see was the Metamodernist Manifesto by Shia Labeouf which I ran across yesterday thanks to twitter. Reading through that document brought to mind Mars One so many times that I felt a clarity of thought about the venture which allows me to express it perhaps more clearly now than I could have before, and so I shall endeavor to do.

My Olympic Dreams are a paradox as the Metamodernist Manifesto describes so well. Since Mars One began to be talked about there have been doubters aplenty who will go on endlessly about all of the reasons why Mars One's plans cannot be realized and they seem to think that we who have applied to be colonists don't know these things. They think that we are ignorant of the dangers, unknowing the obstacles, and in need of education about all of the things that will stop us. The truth is that we know all of what they are saying. We are well aware of the dangers. We also know that those dangers cannot stop us. We have embraced our informed naivety and go forth in a spirit of magical realism which no obstacles can hinder. This pragmatic romanticism is exactly why mankind has not been stopped in its grand designs of years past. When we embrace the paradox, we can go from nothing to a moon landing in ten years with less computer power than you carry in your pocket today. As the Metamodernist Manifesto says "Existence is enriched if we set about our task as if those limits might be exceeded, for such action unfolds the world."

So come along on the journey with us. Today we are the1058. Soon that number will dwindle until there are four of us sitting on a firecracker and then it will grow again as we populate another world.