• Well I’ll be a son of a gun
• To Tickle My Fancy
• Blimey
• You bet your sweet bippy
• Vamoose
• I say, old chap
• The bees knees
• Young whipper snapper
• Blithery poop!
• Holy guacamole
• Heebie-Jeebies
• Gad Zooks!
• Gee whiz
• Cut of your jib
• Whole Kit and caboodle
• Willy nilly
• A load of codswallop
• Run Amok
• Heavens to betsy
• Shiver me timbers
• Darn Tootin’
• I say, old chap
• Aw, shucks
• The heebie jeebies
• Top ‘o’ the morning
• Shut your pie hole
• A bunch of Hooligans
• Fisticuffs
• Ninkempoopery
• To wallow in one’s own crapulence
• Spectacles, Monacle
• No good-nick
• Fiddlesticks!
• Box Social
• “The infamous….”
• “The pinnacle of…”
• “Bestow upon”
• Festively plump
• One’s Netheregions
• One’s Woe or Plight instead of “problems”
• Caliber
• To go hagledy pagledy
• To run for the hills
• To run amok
• To run rampant
• By Golly
• Sonny Jim
• Laddy Boy
• Boy Howdy
• Spiffing
• Shin dig
• Bolderdash!
• Darn tootin’
• Jimmie Cricket
• Gee willickers
• How frightfully rude, I certainly hope someone stabs you in the eye.
• Australianisms that are so offensive they’re funny – Strewth, Grouse
• Pardon my language, but you’ve ruffled my petticoats for the last time! (futurama)
• My tusks, Babar
• Shpadoinkle (Cannibal! The musical)
• Spoot, Spootenheimer, Spoot head, SPoot meister, Spoot wad (angry beavers)
• Cromulent, Embiggened (Simpsons)

Go on, shove them into your vocabulary, thereby expanding it. Also, add your own favourite quirky words so that I may expand mine.

If submerging oneself in a bathtub full of something isn’t a sign of overindulgence, decadence and poor bathtub maintenance know-how, I don’t know what is. This one features the customary “make a face befitting the tragedy you are depicting” pose, dedicated to the photographer who refused to shoot me until it was stricken.

Wallowing in my own crapulence, trying to look my usual self but actually freezing my lower half under freezing bulbs and getting penetrated by icy winds everywhere else:

Finally, my whining about the cold and uncomfortable nature of my position has earned me the chance to take some precious nitrous while I’m stuck in the tub, in the name of “anesthetizing” myself from the cold.

I still have these bulbs, for I have been too lazy to recycle them and optimistic about coming up with another idea for a shoot. Ideally, the bathtub would be one of those “white on gold feet” numbers and it wouldn’t be winter nor my overweight former self that would be captured…

Do you have any other ideas for what could be made from so many identical little cylinders or small boxes? In the interests of putting off cleaning up the giant mess I made in storage, please promptly think of some clever suggestions.

“Thank you all very much for not filming this on your cell phone. That has become the new scourge of stand-up = people sitting there thinking, “Well, I want to enjoy this…But now is not good for me. Later would be better. Later and smaller would be better for my schedule.” – John Oliver

“You all know Unlce Sam? He’s that goat-faced dude who dresses up like Apollo Creed. And he’s always pointing at you – he wants you…Is that really the imagery we should be listening to? An uncle who looks like he’s about to touch you? A touch uncle? Uncle Sam wants you…to keep a secret…” – Glenn Wool
“How do insurance companies know what is and isn’t an act of God? Do they have a hotline to God? Do they call him up?
God: Hello, God speaking, what do you want?
Gervais: Um, that volcanic ash cloud – was that you?
God: Yep. Yes that was an act of me alright.
Gervais: So we shouldn’t pay out?
God: No, don’t f*king pay them a penny, son.
Gervais: Brilliant. While I’ve got you here, did you make a tree fall on Steve Baxter’s car?
God: There’s a lot of Steve Baxters…
Gervais: Steve Baxter, 2 acacia Rd, Houndslow. It happened at 2.15pm on the 3rd of June this year.
God: 2.15? Third of June? No, that wasn’t me. I was in Africa that day giving AIDS to babies.” – Ricky Gervais

“I was in a band which we called The Prevention, because we hoped people would say we were better than The Cure. “- Alan Sharp
“Why do people feel safe under blankets? It’s not like a murderer will come come in thinking “I’M GOING TO KILL…Ah darn, he’s under a blanket!” – Tweet by Peter Griffin

I have one truly blunder-some anecdote of my own, please add your own and let’s make this a real moron-a-thon.

  Once upon an interstate  -vacation, I was trying to reach -the peak of Melbourne’s tallest -building when suddenly, years -of being under the influence and -escaping impending doom -finally caught up with me. I -must have made a -miscalculation about the speed -of either myself or the revolving -door, the end result being a -mighty roaring as I overloaded -the door by wedging myself -between one of its panels and -the building, forcing the door to -stop (after attempting to -dislodge me for a few seconds -with the use of force). I had -become wedged in a revolving door, in the middle of a buzzing city. Luckily for me I was extremely high and could not stop laughing at myself, which meant nobody could beat me to it.

I had but  one alternative to a cast – wearing an expensive inflatable, removable, space boot for some months. Due to my unrelenting analgesic-gulping ways, the damage lasted over a year: my foot would heal halfway, I would cease to feel the pain and proceed to re-injure it!

Have you or anyone you know done anything to rival my misfortune? Ignobel prize winners would fare well in this experiment, except, bizarre as their actions may be, they have a purpose – this, too, is often obscure. For instance, scientists recently discovered that chickens prefer attractive humans – they consistently choose the same photos as the humans surveyed. Studying chicken attraction, as far as scientific callings go, is a pretty pathetic one. So, if you don’t know anyone who has simply failed at a normal task, like I failed to utilize a door, do you instead know any humans who have succeeded at tasks that probably shouldn’t be tasks to begin with? Let’s not rule out the self-humiliation that these humans achieve. Let us embrace our flawed nature and laugh heartily at random acts of silliness.

Artwork: “The Genius” by V. Maximus on DeviantArt.

A taste of things to come – My first Photoshopped Maggigger

Or, rather, more expensive, flashier and less restrictive pastures. Whilst grazing here I plan to focus my writing more on issues of import – soon I shall be denouncing the concept of open mindedness, sharing a hilariously quirky piece of world news-related trivia that is bound to entice hearty chuckling; finally, I shall propose a new voting procedure that will make democracy run smoother whilst pointing out the bumps in its current path. And that’s just in the next fortnight – I’m also expanding my mastery of programs from “word & paint” to include “Photoshop”, and thus I’ll be able to illustrate the quirky scenarios and such that have thus far been imprisoned in my scull. I shall also share some gruesome images of self-harm which have been censored out of WordPress and deviant art in the interests of bringing the behaviour out of the dark, dispelling ignorance about it and abolishing shame related to compulsive self-harming behaviours. I’ll be scanning olden images and juxtaposing them with incredibly inappropriate captions for the sake of our mutual amusement as well. New posts will be only published here at the new adress, so there’s virtually no point in going back to http://www.captainpinhead.wordpress.com, from whence I came (unless you loathe the layout). All worthwhile past publications have been duplicated to kick-start Surrealisations.

Even before I post any exclusive entries here, this blog boasts certain key differences – improvements, rather, that make it crap all over my previous blog. The “about me” has 200% more content and 10x more preposterousness packed into it. Feel free to comment on the style, I’m fairly certain the font, though undoubtedly quirktastic, is too pompous for smooth reading. Or perhaps the two complaining parties are too blame for either reading my words too roughly or their intolerance to obscure fonts.

Surrealisations features easier navigating methods, a system of internal links between similar articles that has the advantage of actual functionality as well as a categorising system which is highly superior to the oafish attempt I made to organize my blogs as they were being created. No un ategorised material running hageldy-pageldy on your page, and categorical overlapping only when posts fall into two distinct categories, not due to the undifferentiated and similar nature of the categories themselves. A little search window that won’t cloud your results with every wordpress blog which mentions the search terms. Last but not least, I have created sub-menus – quite a step up from the “sub-menu” of yesteryear.

To my readers, past and present, I just wanted to say that I’m really looking forward to…

simply steer my body so I can avoid bumping into shit while I walk.

Now these are some Christmas wishes I doubt you’ll ever find inside of a hallmark card.

If you’ve read the more detailed page, this is what you could see on nos:

1) Prepare thy stash – preferably in a manner where you can see it and it takes up as much of your field of view as possible. You want to feel bountiful when you start, and be prepared for the inevitable end.

2) Whip out your machine; preferably, it is your own and there is no sharing, plus you have gotten to know it and hallucinated some critters inside it, if you’re lucky. Below: the elusive Knight Ross Oxide and the illustrious Sir Nossalot have developed relationships with their respective machines because they are professionals and spend much time machine in hand. Also, they are weirdos.

3) Turn off the lights, turn on any UV lights/light toys, ensure everything you could need is within your grabitational field, pre-roll cigarettes and other smoke-ables; wear something cooky on your shoes because your feet may enter in as characters. If inside, turn 0n fans and open windows for ventilation. You can even add a free strobe light effect to your trip by blinking continuously. Acknowledge your fellow travellers with a cheers-like “clink”-ing of your machines. Warn any newbies in your environment that you’re going away for a while and are not to be disturbed. For best results, get an mp3 player, put something like infected mushroom or something that has strong pleasant associations for you on it, get a splitter and connect two sets of headphones to the one music device. This way, you’re in sync with your partner in crime.

4) Prepare your “nos theatre” – your field of view will be the backdrop of all of your trips – insert something interesting/confusing for extra fun. You can improve your field of view with bracelets/glow sticks/arm warmers and other hand/arm accessories. Gloves make it harder to load, however. Below – a simple example of a theatre – a human, some nature, the sunrise. Having humans in your field of view is an advanced thing and can be hard to handle unless you really know the person well.

5) Lay back, relax, and start loading! o not load more than two bulbs at a time; it can cause frostbite, explosions, and if not that then it definitely wears the machine out quicker. Load one, and make the loading into a dance – a dance you can eventually do automatically, while tripping. Then you can get into a rhythm where the loading just seems to happen for you and you interpret this occuring in various ways – as the machine performing some sort of task autonomously, etc. Enter the nos bubble.

6) Try moving to the music; try just relaxing all of your muscles; try communicating without words, try anything, it’ll be different on nos. Keep an eye on  your stash so that when the inevitable end comes you’ll be mentally prepared. Make sure nothing upsets you emotionally or this trip could turn into a form of escapism – then you WON’T BE ABLE TO STOP!

Don’t get into deep conversations – you won’t have the short term memory to make them work. Especially avoid talking to anyone NOT on nos as they will not understand your simple ways. Shun them, thus:

a) feign attempt to understand

b) Furrow your brow in imaginary confusion

c) Shrug your shoulders and get straight back into it, avoiding further eye contact. They can’t invade your reality when you control your senses. This is the best way to hold your machine whilst inhaling.

Laugh, dance, explore your psyche…It’s all good. Unfortunately, it’ll always end in this:

Luckily, nos is the only thing that’s worth cleaning up because, depending on how disgraceful you got the night before, usually you’ve left behind a number of fresh bulbs. Once these are spoken for, collect your bulbs and try to recycle them somewhere – stockpile them until you can. There’s a whole lot of metal we’re wasting just to get high otherwise.

FOr an idea of what Nitrous Taking can look like from the inside out, watch this:

Destino – Salvador Dali & Disney

Nos inhalation 101 and this article are just the basics. If you want to have a good trip read this, and if you want to make sure you don’t hurt yourself read this.

Note: All photos are fabrications for education purposes only, you betcha.

What is dualism in the philosophy of mind? What forms does dualism take? Two of the most significant problems with dualism are (i) the problem of brain functioning and (ii) the problem of causal efficacy. Explain what these problems are. Can any form of dualism overcome these problems?   

The enigma of existence and mankind’s place in the world has raised a number of  interesting and highly mysterious questions concerning the nature of the human  mind. Since the time of ancient Greece, one of the principle problems for  philosophers has been trying to reconcile the ambiguous nature of the human  mind  with the physical world[1]. While a variety of different theories exist, the  most prevalent one throughout civilisation has probably been dualism, which was  first formally postulated by Rene Descartes in the 17^th century, although it no  doubt  existed subconsciously for many generations before that. This essay  attempts to take a critical look at dualism and then enumerate some of the  arguments for and against it. It will, finally, through a process of research-based  extrapolation, suggest that a firm rejection of dualism is the only viable option to  ensure the further development of the philosophy of mind.

What is dualism:

Before we look at the different strands of dualist theory, it is useful to begin with a generalised dualist model. The word ‘dual’ is fairly explicit; essentially the dualist philosopher believes that there are two kinds of properties in the world; physical and non-physical.  The physical world is everything that we can see, touch and hear, or as Descartes, a pioneering substance dualist put it, anything that is extended in space, with length, breadth or height as an indicating factor.[2] Conversely, the non-physical is a ‘second and radically different kind of substance’[3] that has no spatial extension or position. It is this, according to the dualists that makes up the mind and provides us, as human beings, with the ability to reason, calculate and be emotional or introspective. It is important to note at this point the spiritual factor of dualism, as it will come up later in the discussion as an important point of contention.

With this definition in mind, we can briefly look at the various strands of dualism. They have been broken into two broad categories: substance dualism and property dualism. Descartes was a proponent of Cartesian dualism, and as he saw it, the mind is not your material body but instead a non-spatial substance all of its own, devoted purely to thinking.[4] The crux here is that this mind is distinct from the body, and the two separate entities are in constant causal interaction with each other in order to make your body ‘behave in purposeful ways.’[5] Descartes termed the mechanism of this causal interaction ‘animal spirits,’ which he defined as a very ‘subtle’ material substance. [6] The other form of substance dualism is one that philosopher Paul Churchland describes as popular dualism. This theory holds that the mind is like a ‘ghost in a machine,’ operating in or very near to the body, generally with a strong interaction with the brain. [7]

The other main variant of dualism is known as property dualism. It essentially holds that there is no substance beyond the human brain, but that the brain has special emergent properties that are both non-physical and irreducible.[8] These properties can be thoughts, or emotions, or desires, or feelings of pain, and they cannot be explained in terms of the physical sciences. One strand, called epiphenomenalism, goes so far to suggest that these emergent properties are merely by-products of preconceived actions of our brains. In effect, they are ‘impotent’[9] recordings of the actions of our brain rather than the stimulus for actions. According to this view, freewill is essentially negated. Another position holds that these emergent properties are actually in constant interaction and have causal effects on one another. This position is called interactionist property dualism. [10]

The dualist dilemma- brain functioning and causal efficacy

However, these dualist positions suffer from the same problems; they either negate the link between the brain and the mind, or fail to explain how the mind (which they hold to be made of a non-physical substance) has any impact on the brain and the body.

As demonstrated by Churchland, substance dualism can be easily defeated by the problem of brain functioning. To paraphrase his argument, if the mind really is distinct from the brain, then it follows that impairments to the brain from outside influences like alcohol, drugs, senility, or damage should have no effect on the mind. However, it is a truism to say that this is not the case.[11] Alcohol severely impairs judgment and rational thought, while a knock to the head can destroy the power of the mind instantly. The property dualist can to a certain extent counter this argument by claiming that as the ‘emergent properties’ are inextricably linked to the brain, they will inevitably be impaired by brain damage.[12] However, without stipulating how this damage occurs or how these apparently irreducible properties can be damaged, they are still not satisfactorily defending the theory.

The experiments of the 70’s and 80’s, concerning the cleaving of the corpus callosum, went a long way in disrupting the dualist argument and reaffirming materialism. Essentially, the procedure was designed to reduce the severity of epileptic seizures from particularly affected sufferers, and involved separating the brains two hemispheres at their communication point, in effect preventing communication between the two. Principally of interest here, were the experiments done on patients who had received the operation.[13] These displayed a tendency for the different hemispheres to have difficulty forming unified actions and recollections for the single mind, and displayed very powerfully the relationship between the mind and the state of the brain.[14] The conclusion that can logically be drawn here is that the mind is a product of the structure of   the   brain.

The linking factor here is the problem of causal efficacy, or in other words, the way in which the dualist claims the physical body and the non-physical mind interact. How indeed does a non-physical substance affect the workings of the brain? If it indeed has no spatial extension or position, how does it transcend the physical world to cause actions, and conversely, how does it receive stimuli (such as pain, for example) that would by most accounts seem purely physical?[15] If the dualist wishes to infuse his argument with credibility, he must answer this question adequately. Unfortunately for the dualist, at this point in time, his answer is purely speculative. Descartes depended upon ‘animal spirits’ to explain causal efficacy, but surely this is as unsupported and imaginative as any other dualist claim.[16] Other theories have also been postulated, but all rely on the initial premise of the non-physical mind and consequently they also fall short of being credible or scientifically acceptable. Whereas the materialist can speak with passion about the complex workings of neurones and cells and electricity working between the spinal cord and the brain, the dualist has no established basis for his explanations of causal efficacy, and instead has to exercise a deifying belief in a purely speculative non-physical substance.[17]

The Dead-ends of Dualism

It is with this last point that we enter the crux of this debate; namely dualism’s open relation to the concept of ‘faith’ and religion. The reason that the progress of the philosophy of mind has been so inextricably bogged down for hundreds of years is that the stakes are simply too high. The classical dualist (and forgive the generalisation) is not arguing for the sake of intellectual stimulation; he is arguing to preserve the very foundation of his lifestyle; he is arguing to uphold one of the key aspects of his religion and thus arguing to preserve the status quo. If he is defeated by the arguments of the materialist, he must sacrifice an aspect of his religion and most probably far more as well. For the implications of dualism go far beyond the petty confines of the nature of human intelligence. Rather, they touch upon the fundamental issues of religion, such as the ‘soul’ and life after death. The tragedy for dualists is: how can there be life after death if the mind has no ethereal non-physical qualities?[18]

It is this, in this writer’s opinion, which is the reason for the stagnation of philosophy of mind. Right now, materialism faces the same opposition as evolution. Both are far more potent as theories in terms of scientific support and logical coherency than their religiously based alternatives, and yet both face savage opposition from people who are arguing for more than just philosophical progress. The materialist is charged with an impossible duty, and unfortunately, no amount of scientific evidence or logical arguing, such as the Ockham’s Razor hypothesis of rational methodology[19], will solidly end the debate, because dualism’s main premise is our inability to prove it. Thus, dualism is a dead-end, or as philosopher Daniel Dennett put it: “accepting dualism is giving up.”[20]

Dualism’s Defence

With all these criticisms in mind, one must wonder why anyone would feel compelled to believe in dualism, let alone the majority of the human race. The dualist appeal lies in its universality.[21] Apart from the obvious religious connection, its arguments touch upon the fundamental mysteries of human life, such as the power of human introspection and the irreducibility of thoughts and emotions.

The argument for introspection is an interesting and undeniably compelling one. Essentially, our mind is so unbelievably complex and layered that it feels genuinely impossible to factor it all down to biology and structure. When we look in on ourselves, we do not see neurones or frontal lobes or surging electricity; instead we feel thoughts and desires, impulses and emotions.[22] In short, the consequences of introspection seem completely alien to the field of science and biology. Camus eloquently phrases the dilemma of mans alienation from science and logic in his essay ‘The Myth of Sisyphus,’

That universal reason, practical or ethical, that determinism, those categories that determine everything are enough to make a decent man laugh. They have nothing to do with the mind.  They negate its profound truth…[23]

Camus expresses here the doubts and anxieties of Everyman.[24] To us, a mere scientific explanation seems flimsy compared to the power of introspection. But as Churchland argues, the serious use of this argument for the sake of dualism is ‘deeply suspect.’[25] If our abilities are constant, then introspection should have the same fallibility (if not far more) as vision, hearing or touch. The assumption that we have the ability to analyse our own minds is unsound scientifically because there can be no qualitative verification or consistency.[26]

Irreducibility is essentially a collection of arguments similar to the arguments from introspection, basically appealing to human beings to assess their own feelings and thoughts as being irreducible. Descartes was one of the first to suggest this argument. He believed that the human ability to reason, particularly in the field of mathematics, could not be reduced to the physical nature of our biology, and thus must have a special non-physical quality.[27] In this day and age however, this argument becomes deeply problematic due to the advent of the calculator and the computer, machines that are far more capable of mathematical skills like addition, subtraction or calculus than the average human mind.[28] Others have cited emotions as an irreducible property that confirms dualism, and certainly to anyone who has ever been in love or mourned the passing of a family member, this argument seems convincing. However, yet again science has developed significantly to discover the inexplicable relationship between emotions and chemicals in the brain.[29] The materialist has no choice but to mercilessly state that we can trace our complex faculties to biological roots each and every time.

Conclusion: Where do we go from here?

Until they can provide physical evidence of the non-physical (which seems highly unlikely, and furthermore, obscenely paradoxical), the duellist’s argument must be rejected. Philosophy of mind depends upon logical arguing, scientific support and furthermore, upon the potential for development. Dualism offers none of these. Philosophy of mind should now be devoted to the physical properties of the brain and how its structure provides us with such a rich and introspectively-troubled existence.

References:

Camus, Albert The Myth of Sisyphus, (Penguin: France, 1942)

Churchland, Paul, Matter and Consciousness, (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1988),

Dennett, Daniel Explaining Consciousness entry in Consciousness Explained (Boston: Little, Brown, 1991,

Devlin, Keith Goodbye, Descartes: The end of logic and the search for a new cosmology of the mind, (John Wiley & Sons, Inc: Canada, 1997)

Gallois, Andre The world without, the mind within: An essay on first-person authority , (Cambridge University Press: Great Britain, 1996

Glover, Jonathan I: The Philosophy and Psychology of Personal Identity (London: Penguin, 1988)

Putnam, Hilary Representation and Reality (Bradford, MIT Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1988)

 Change your perspective, change your priorities. If you’re unhappy, don’t whine about it and cover up the tears with drugs. Don’t escape it, actively work to change your reality so that it is no longer something that needs escaping. Drugs have their use, but they should always be the icing on the cake; never the cake itself. Happiness cannot be found in a gram of meth, a nos machine or a syringe. Happiness has to come from within, from a place so independent of the details of your life that nothing can shake it.

Treat life like a trip – don’t allow yourself to have a bad one.

a) Does heaven promise happiness?
Families often disagree on the “god” issue – but how do the religious plan on enjoying their stay in heaven when they expect your sorry arse to end up in hell? Surely such an occurrence would dampen the whole “eternal bliss” scenario. How could the parent of a child condemned to hell ever forget about their suffering and plight and enjoy any of the promised happy fun times with Jesus in heaven? It is possible that god gives such unfortunates a dose of amnesia to allow them to be perpetually happy and fulfilled as advertised in church? Is this the best that christian parents of heathens like myself can hope for in an afterlife? Being tricked into contentment by way of a amnesia ray a la Men In Black, a procedure that essentially lobotomises a vital part of them and blinds you to the existence of those who you so cherished? This scenario is reminiscent of the nauseating forced happiness that one experiences on extacy; for those who have avoided this experience, just pretend you’re Neo and instead of finding out the disturbing truth you choose the other pill and slip back into the predictable life within the matrix.

Perhaps god somehow redefines what is important to heaven-dwellers; would this be any less appalling? Sure, there could be things that would lose some of their importance in light of eternal life – one would re-evaluate one’s petty mortal worries such as bills and “success”, but if they were to just cease caring that their partner or child was eternally damned, there would have to be some mind-tampering  going on in heaven, tampering that robs people of the right to choose what can matter to them – this choice is essential for free will. No matter how amazingly pimped out heaven is, if people are allowed to retain their memories and their mortal attachments and cares, there will be no peace or serenity for them, but only the anguish of knowing the tragedies befalling those close to them. This isn’t how it is advertised.
I have asked people approaching this position (or so they think) – nearing death, having reared two free-thinking agnostics and predicting they will one day be in heaven whilst the fruit of their loins rotts in hell. I was shocked by their indifference to the proposed situation – I was informed that there are places that one can see from heaven to hell to get their fill of mourning, after which they begin their  lives of eternal bliss. The fools! The normal human grieving process is temporary because the tragedy grieved is temporary – I for one would find it extremely difficult to enjoy my good fortune whilst those I cared about suffered. The Christians also acknowledged that the level of care they would retain for their sons would be severely diminished and thus they could retain an upbeat demeanor throughout their stay, even during the mourning period.
Bolderdash! If I didn’t have the capacitive to feel negative emotions and have negative thoughts, I wouldn’t be me any more. This is why I avoid extacy – it is a substance that, whilst undeniably intensifying one pole of the human experience, not only neglects but outright forbids the experience of the other side of the spectrum. When happiness is your sole emotional response to this complex and often cruel, unusual world, you get a very eerie sense that something’s not quite right, though, if still under the influence, you are not bothered by this at all – in fact, you’re probably happy about it.
To add to this problematic heaven scenario is the fact that without negative emotions, one would not be able to fully enjoy, or even distinguish, the fact that one is happy. If life was one huge orgasm, we would soon lose interest, because monotony is unbearable and variety is the spice of life, or so they say. Interestingly, I recently read of a woman who suffers from uncontrollable, frequent orgasms – she is indeed sick of them, she cannot bear having conversations with her parents out of embarrassment and she is forever exhausted. I can’t believe so many people are striving to get to a place and they haven’t even considered the consequences for themselves if such a place did exist. ?There have been several attempts to undermine the above argument; I will briefly outline and undermine these to avoid further “counterarguments” along these lines. Apparently, negative emotions are the result of sin and thus don’t exist in heaven. Sadness, longing, and sympathy are all productive negative emotions; to classify all unpleasant feelings as a side effect of sin is to devalue the experience of life, a common repercussion of religious thinking. A depressed person will experience more negative emotions than a healthy person; to suggest that this is mirrored in their behaviour by a higher correlation of sinful acts is absurd, as most people are aware, depression is a debilitating illness. Depression is the result of chemical imbalances in the brain; to maintain that depression is an ethical disorder one would have to hold that committing sins affects our levels of neurotransmitters as well as the metabolic rate of their absorption… It is true that when an individual acts in a manner that strays from their particular code of ethics, they may feel regret or shame as a result. However, to hold that all negative emotions come from sin is absurd. Firstly, one only feels bad when one acts out of accordance with their own ideas of ethical standards, not God’s. It is plausible that what is considered a sin could bring pleasure and what is not a sinful act could result in shame. Emotions are common amongst all mammals, is it thus possible for animals to sin? We certainly know that they experience negative feelings, but since animals are defined as incapable of committing sins, our identically functioning mammalian brains must be working differently. Mammals must experience negative emotions due to environmental disturbances, social dynamics, personal losses and regrets, dietary or hormonal deficiencies and the like, whilst humans, despite apparent correlations between biological, social and personal issues and their moods, somehow derive their negative emotions from actions alone – not genes, not market crashes, not from traumatic experiences but sins that they commit. Pure dribble.
Neuroscience allows us to predict how a person is likely to feel, we can measure levels of neuradrenalin (energy) dopamine (motivation) and seretonin (happiness) levels of the brain and accurately predict  and treat mood disorders. Isn’t that much more amazing and beautiful than simply attributing everything bad to sin and the devil, and anything good to god?
Now that we have the tools to understand the human mind, why revert to our primitive ways of explaining the world? Happiness is caused by seratonin, how can people seriously think that your “soul” will drift up into heaven where you will prance around with god all day and be infinitely happy when the mechanism that we now know is necessary for feeling happy remains in the body? And if sin is the cause of low levels of happy chemicals, why aren’t christians outraged about anti-depressant medications helping people “cheat” their way out of feeling bad for a supposed sin?

Are the chances of getting into heaven really fair for everybody?
Walter Ego is currently 20 years of age. He won’t be smelling the foul stench of his own mortality for a number of years, and presently, he is an agnostic. However, if we revisit Walter in 50 years, and he is still alive, he is far more likely to rely on the daily crutch of some form of religion because:
He has become somewhat senile.
He knows his life will end soon and it is frightening and unnerving to accept his mortality.
It is impossible for him to imagine nonexistence since he has been existing his entire life and knows nothing else.
iv. He has lost bowel control and his quality of life has withered to a level that leaves him relentlessly unsatisfied, so he yearns for something more, something beyond what has become of his life.
Can call it whatever you want, you can call it a spiritual awakening and closeness to god prompted by a near death experience or a miracle. I call it fear. Regardless, Walter has little say over how long he survives; sure he can add a few years with diet and exercise or lose a few by smoking, but in the grand scheme of things, the age of our demise is not under our control. If Walt happens to get pulverised by a speeding truck at the tender age of 21, he will end up in hell according to christianity, for he is not yet a believer. If, however, he avoids the accident and lives to the ripe old age of 71, he will go to heaven because of his conversion. How can our supposed eternal destiny be hinged upon a matter of chance? How could the relatively insignificant detail of the date of our demise decide whether we spend forever enjoying ourselves in heaven or rotting in hell? Granted, a deceased 21-year old walter would have had the opportunity to accept Jesus into his heart during his fleeting time on this earth, but at that time in his life, having been exposed to the information that the world randomly bestowed upon him, and with the use of the intellect that god supposedly gave him, he could not help but suspend judgement on the matter. The question remains, how can the trivial matter of someone’s early death limit their chances of heaven membership to such an immense extent? Some of us are given several decades to find our faith whilst others are left to rot in this sordid cesspool we dub society for over seventy years. Of course one is more likely to ignore reason and consider God’s existence a plausibility when death is imminent. I recall hearing that the system is supposed to treat everyone as equals, each “soul” having equivalent opportunities for being “saved”?
It becomes blindingly obvious that the system is, if it exists, extremely biased, when one considers the impact that one’s country of origin/upbringing can have on their likely religious choices. Worse still, this arbitrary factor is entirely out of the individual’s control. Most of us have been born and raised in western countries, abound with christian churches, swirming with seniors equipped with pamphlet upon pamphlet to inform us of the key character in christianity – Jesus. God, according to christianity, will not permit anyone to enter the pearly gates unless they have made friends with his son. If you’ve heard about Jesus but die while contemplating rival prophets, or you’re just getting to know Jesus and aren’t quite ready to let him in, or you’re born in a country where christianity is the minority religion – no heaven for you. How likely, in our society, is it that someone will convert to Hindu, Islam Buddhism or Mormonism? About as likely as your average hindu-raised Pakistani is to throw out his monument to Ganeesh and buy a bible after receiving a pamphlet from the only christian church in his town. Yet, if our Hindu friend has been priviledged enough to learn about Jesus thus, in the eyes of christianity, his failure to accept him will result in a one-way ticket to hell. When you think about it, if christianity were true, missionaries must put more people in hell than most sins combined. Perhaps heaven is filling up, and this is part of their master plan.
Foreigners aside, to what extent can 21-year old Walter be held responsible for his agnosticism? Sure, he weaved his way through life making decisions here and there, but he cannot be blamed for the information he encountered, unless, he intentionally sought out one-sided arguments and skewed information to rid himself of this belief. Even if he had done this, the fault would lie with God, whose sloppy mind-wiring resulted in the confirmation bias that threatens to thwart our search for any truth regarding something we have already formed a belief. For we will tend to discount the evidence against our hypothesis and perceive the supporting arguments to bear more weight. Walter, using the reasoning powers bestowed by god and the information he has encountered, through no fault of his own, cannot bring himself to believe in God. Walter WANTS to believe. It would make life so much less complicated, it would end his nihilistic despair, it would stop him feeling so alone, and a jesus in your heart is a great insurance policy in case of any errors in his calculations. Unfortunately, god help him, he can’t. But God doesn’t help him, he sends him to hell, in his “infinite wisdom”.
What difference does it make whether a man can swallow the codswallop collectively called Christianity before he dies or not? Should not the virtues of his character be the determinants of his soul’s eternal resting place, rather than his gullability, durability or nationality? Anyone with enough moral fibre in their diet should be safeguarded from a hereafter bunking with satan. Anyone who refuses to ride the Jesus bandwagon is banished to the fiery depths of hell in christianity, and the magnitude of this preposterous condition of entry hurts my brain.
This requirement is reminiscient of a teacher failing students who don’t attend his son’s birthday party. Were he a real God there would be nothing we could do to offend this all-knowing being. He would immediately trace any mean-spirits to traumas of the past, and no sin could stir such a hypersympathetic entity to warrant his fury and vengeance. These are human qualities, they’ve made their way into our concept of god because it was us who created him! Spitefulness, envy towards other gods, annoyance that his son has lost his celebrity status over the centuries – these are all human failings that would be absent in a truly perfect being. Fiddlesticks, the more I cover, the more i uncover; weaning society off of religion is going to be a Herculean task.

Does god know when a person is due to die, even before they are born?
This opens a wormhole of problems and conundrums if it is in fact what Christians believe. He is omniscient, but does that omniscience extend through the fourth dimension? If so, it calls into question the existence of our free will. Any attempt at suicide before the person’s “due date” would be pre-determined to fail. In fact, everything we do, every decision we make that in some way influences the course of our lives (and i think we’ve all heard enough about butterfly wings flapping causing tornadoes to realize that this could include the most insignificant of choices) – it would all have to be pre-determined in order for God to produce an accurate due date.  it is impossible to look into the future without pre-defining what people would do to achieve that state of events, and if God can know what we will do before we do it then there really is no free will, whatever we happen to do, we could not have done otherwise. Compatibalists might dispute this, but the common notion of free will is the ability to have done otherwise. If everything we’ve ever done has already been factored into God’s plan, and his predictions are infallible, then mankind doesn’t have free will. Before a baby is born God could know where it would end up after death! And yet, the whole purpose of our plight here on earth is, supposedly, to utilise this great “free will” tool that God has bestowed upon us. If God sees into the future, the bible contradicts yet again. God gave us free will, so the bible contradicts yet again, if he is able to see into the future.

Unfortunately, the problem with all of these arguments is that eventually, a religious person will bark a typical non-falsifiable claim at you that you can do nothing about due to its unfalsifiable nature. Religion rests on these uncertain pillars, and nobody can knock them down entirely – however it would be silly to base your life on such an unstable structure. So they’ll give you the old “you can’t possibly understand what it would be like to be in heaven, it’s beyond anything you know or can know” or the old “it’s god’s big plan that you can never see”; and you’re left speechless, homicidal with rage at the ignorance exhibited by the person whose eyes you were trying to pry open.

I’m done, there are many more but alas, my fingers are about to fall off and your concentration probably drifted off paragraphs ago. Please let me know if the bible has any safeguards or loopholes against these arguments, and if the questions i have based the arguments on are correct.