A skunk is eating the cat food in our backyard...(Part 1 of 4)

It was almost three in the morning when I was woken up by the sound of door banging coming from the other end of my home. On first impression I thought it was all part of some noisy dream I might of been having, but just a few seconds of having my eyes adjusting to the dark and I came to the conclusion that the racket was real. When my oldest son has his sleeping hours turned around I am typically treated to everything from guitar playing and singing to the constant annoying whoosh and bang noise of sliding doors and opening and closing over and over again for what sometimes seems like endless hours while I try to fall asleep. This annoyance is a mixed blessing since most of the time the racket is part of what eventually puts me in the counting sheep mode because it also brings to me a sort of peace of mind because of my then realization that at least he is safe and sound at home. Last night was no different with the exception that the orchestrated nuisance had more percussion than most other times. I dragged by tired soul out of bed with the intent of heading towards the source of banging to put a stop to it when he must of heard my bedroom door opening and he preempted my move by describing to me how he had been trying to get a skunk that was in our back yard to leave so that he could go out and have a smoke. As miserable as I had been less than ten seconds earlier as I had rushed out of bed to make the "please stop the noise so I can get some sleep" speech, I just had to laugh at his dilemma loosing all advantage with respect to showing any power over the situation. I just turned around and went back to bed eventually falling asleep even though the "scare the skunk" song and dance was not yet at an end.

This morning as I woke up realizing that my total hours of sleep were definitely not enough to keep me from being grateful that it was a federal holiday, I found my son still wide awake waiting to share some of his prior night skunk adventure. A few minutes after our morning pleasantries he brought up to my attention that in the middle of the night he had written some kind of extensive essay revealing some of the things that he had recently learned from his own experiences plus a collection of at least five books I had noticed him carrying in and out of the house for the last two weeks. What suddenly surprised me was not the fact that he had done the paper since he is currently also studying because next Saturday he will be taking the California High School Proficiency Test. The actual treat came from his willingness to allow me to read what he had written. It is more typical than not that he will write an essay or a song and when asked if I can read or listen for his reply to be "not yet." Today was different and I have taken advantage of this rare opportunity to spend a little time getting some insight into his current mental process by reading his essay. I will confess that a lot of it's content is stuff that we have already talked about in the last few weeks when he sits soaking his feet in the jacuzzi and I am dipped in the wonder bubble machine hoping my mind will find a bit of the same relief that my back does while sitting in the hot water.

I have made a copy of my son's four page typed essay in order for me to be able to share with all of you this rare opportunity in the next few posts. I want to forewarn you that even I, that know my teenage son so well, had to read the essay a few times over before being able to totally understand all of it's meaning. Tomorrow will be his 17th birthday and as you will soon discover, this essay is a bit above average in content and thought process. Not all that you will read is simple to grasp, yet the parts in which you are able to make a connection to his mental process will bring a vast amount of light into what I have mentioned in many of my previous posts with regard to his abilities. All and all I have truly enjoyed reading this paper and hope that you will too. Here it is:

The Supercomputer and the Equation of the Universe

(page 1)

One of the most commonly thought about questions is the existence of God. The concept itself seems to open too many subjective interpretations, the definition usually including both a sense of all knowing and everlasting presence, and opinionated judgment over the living, the two of which seem to be the major contradiction in the common Western belief system.

Emotions and judgment stem from the core of human survival, the basis of all emotions being the commonly quoted "Love and Fear." Through adaptation and conditioning, positive emotions (stemmed from "love," a term used to describe the feeling of anything that we are conditioned to want) are the brains way of teaching us to perform actions, which are complimentary to our survival system. Positive action leads to positive consequence. In the same way, negative emotions train our bodies to avoid anything that may be detrimental to the achievement of positive emotions. All these stem from the basic need for survival, which we learn to keep ourselves alive and keep the brain causing these emotions to function. These emotions are wired into our every perception, and motivate our every action.

The contradiction this brings to the common God theory is that a self sustaining omnipresent system such as God would have no need to attempt to survive, as it is everlasting, therefore its perception would have to be devoid of all emotion and judgment. The belief of sin and righteousness is a human flaw attributed to our lack of understanding of the objective cosmos.

In dealing with logical objective concept of God, the only feasible explanation of an omniscient and omnipresent force, the only one known to actually exist, is that of the Universe itself. The concept is reminiscent of many cultural beliefs, even that of Christianity's understanding that God is part of everything. The Universe is the name of God, mathematics is the logical "thoughts" of God, and physics is the most basic physical representation of God, the building blocks of the universe, atoms. These building blocks form chemical structures, which form biological structures, which form coexisting ecosystems, which form the bigger picture that is the entire Universe, and mathematics runs through all of it and controls its every action.

In this way the Universe is akin to a massive supercomputer, consisting of physical representations of mathematical equations constantly interacting with one another, intertwining everything with everything else into one big universal equation. The brain itself is not unlike this complex computer, were it not wired into its constant survival trip it could probably conceive these equations and interpret them in a way for our consciousness to perceive. It's not known how these basic chemical reactions in the brain cause the phenomenon of consciousness, nor why we perceive certain things the way we do. Why does a photon moving at a certain frequency give us the perception of the color blue when it bounced off the water and into our eye sending an electric pulse through the optic nerve and into the brain, and why do certain psychoactive chemicals alter these perceptions in such a way to make these color more vibrant or bring out new previously unnoticed dimensions in the world around us?

(To be continued on the next post...)

Dad