An Introduction to Rain

7/28/2009.

Suppose the year is 5000 B.C., and me and you are mostly naked, where we wrap strings of leaves around our private parts. Or in other words, we're cavemen. I belong to 1 cavemen tribe and you belong to another cavemen tribe.

But suppose 1 day, it starts raining. In that case, we stay in our caves and no longer go out hunting today because it's raining. This makes it such that all the cavemen will stay in the cave because it's raining outside.

But suppose 1 caveman got clever, and asked a 2nd caveman "Who made the rain fall?" In this case, the 2nd caveman will say "I don't know." However, suppose the 1st caveman asked another clever caveman the same question "Who made the rain fall?" The clever caveman will reply "How do you know someone made the rain fall?" Now - how can the 1st caveman answer that? What can the 1st caveman say to counter that? Does the 1st caveman that asked the question - actually know who causes the rain to fall?

Or in other words, there's already a push question involved. There's no difference between saying "Who made the rain fall?" and "Someone makes the rain fall - do you know who it is?"

It is not the same as asking "Does someone make the rain fall, and if so, who?"

Anyways, cavemen philosophers that are stuck in the cave because it's raining can ask other cavemen "Who's idea is it that it rains" or "Why does it rain."

I mean, it rains some days and it doesn't rain some days. Cavemen sitting around in 5000 B.C. - how could they know why it rains? They can ask each other all they want "who or why it rains," but how could any cavemen ever know? This phenomenon - it would be inconceivable how any cavemen sitting around could answer the age old question "why does it rain" or "do you know why it rains?"

3/21/2008.

Suppose something incredibly improbable happens. A droplet of rain takes a particular precise path down from the clouds to the ground. The odds of that exact path being chosen by pure chance is trillions to 1. It's almost inconceivable. Yet the drop of rain took the path it took, against such incredible odds.

As if that wasn't amazing enough, the next drop of rain also took some 1 particular path. Buffeted by collisions with air currents, it followed a path nobody could possibly have predicted prior, with billions of equally-likely paths ignored.

How can we explain this incredibly improbable event? Purely by chance? Boy, that's a tough question. So suppose somebody proposed a "rain elf" that directs each droplet of rain on a precise path. Surely that explains how 1 path can be chosen even when the odds against that particular path is trillions to 1.

In that case, the rain elf controls rain and that is an explanation to why it rains sometimes. Not only does it explain why it rains sometimes, but it also explains why each path of a rain droplet went through that exact path - why, the rain elf wanted it go to that path.

Now, how can you argue against the rain elf? Can you explain how such a mind-bogglingly improbable event could occur purely by chance? Are we compelled to accept the existence of the rain elf? Surely you can't argue against this rain elf.

If you don't believe me, just wait a couple of weeks, until it rains. Then surely you'll know what I mean. After all - can *you* predict the path of a rain drop?

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At 1 time, we didn't know what caused rain. Believing that God causes the rain to fall doesn't explain anything. When rain is later explained, you are welcome to say, "Oh! So that's how God causes the rain to fall!" The point is, such beliefs may temporarily satisfy your curiosity, but they don't actually provide any explanation. They don't explain anything. They simply satisfy curiosities.

10/25/2008.

A raindrop falls from the sky and follows a complex path. The probability that a raindrop would follow that particular path is infinitesimal, but that doesn't mean we need a God to direct every turn every raindrop takes.

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Suppose you didn't understand evaporation. You just had never been taught it or never understood it. Now someone comes up to you and says, "An invisible elf puts the rain back in the sky so it can fall again. If you can't explain how rain gets back up in the sky, you must believe in my elf."

And, of course, you point to the rain as "proof" that your elf exists.

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Back to 7/28/2009 again.

No, the fact that I don't know something, does not mean I have to make up something. You have to observe something in order to know something. Things are true to the extent they've been observed and demonstrated to be true. It is foolish to be more confident in your opinions that the knowledge you have justifies, it would be irrational to have less.

So, when did religion start?

Religion started when the 1st person was too "cowardly" and "dishonest" to say - "I don't know."

Note that by religion, I'm talking about the formation of it. Not how it is today or how it died out. After a religion dies out, it becomes mythology.

For example, Greek mythology at 1 time was a religion. Not a shrewd of evidence that Zeus or the sun god or any of the Greek gods existed, and yet for several hundred years, the Greeks built statues of them and sowrshipped them. Not a shrewd of evidence that the sun god Ra existed but yet the Egyptians worshipped them.

Or in other words, the whole point of religion is a mechanism called faith, which is the absence of proof or evidence. Oh well.

Greek mythology and whatever the ancient Egyptians believed did not die out because they've been disproven, but because nobody believes them today. And when people stopped believing them altogether. So when the population of a religion is 0, it is then reduced to a mythology.

So when Christianity took over, the Greeks converted to Christianity, leaving the "Greek religion" death, and now called a mythology.

So religions comes and go. Thousands and thousands of them. The religions that involve why it rains or how the sun goes across the sky have long become mythology because they have been disproved -- we know why it rains and how the sun goes across the sky.

So the oldest lasting religions today involve something that requires negative proof - which is impossible to disprove. That is, what happens after death

Who believes in rain gods?

There was a Semitic rain god named Hadad (also called Baal). The people of Venezuela and Colombia believed in a rain god of the Wayuu people named Huya. The Japanese believed in a rain dragon-god named Zennyo Ryūō, as well as a rain god called Takitsuhiko. The Navajo of Arizona and New Mexico believed in a rain god called Tonenili. The Mayans believed in a rain god called Chaac, as well as Bacab. The Aborigines of Australia believed in a rain god called Wuluwaid, as well as Kalseru, as well as a snake-rain god called Wollunqua. The Aztecs believed in a rain god called Tlaloc. The Mixtec believed in a rain god called Dzahui.

The Zapotecs believed in a rain god called Cocijo. The Chinese believed in a rain dragon-god called Kui, as well as a rain dragon-god called Yinglong. The Vedic Hindus believed in a rain god called Indra (but also as other gods). The Dinka people of Sudan believed in a rain god called Denka (also called Deng and Dengdit), as well as Nhialic. The Incas believed in a rain god called Kon. The Totonac people of ancient Mexico believed in a rain god called Aktzin. The Arabians believed in a rain god called Hobal. The Zunis of Western New Mexico believed in a rain god called Shiwanni. The Khoikhoi of southern Africa believed in a rain god called Utixo, also called Tiqua.

Here's a question to ponder about - what does proving something that was unlikely to happen, that happened, actually prove?

Simple - absolutely nothing. Proving that something that was unlikely to happen, happened, proves absolutely nothing.

So I drop a ball, and conclude that gravity exists. But you say, "But it was very improbable that gravity exists." In that case, so, what? That doesn't change anything. Whether gravity was very likely or very improbable to happen, doesn't change the outcome that gravity happened or not. The statistics of the probability that gravity exists does nothing to that gravity actually exists or not. That gravity *already* exists.

Negative proof.

There is no such thing as negative proof. Proof ranges from 0 to a positive number, not from a negative number to a positive number.

For example, I for 1 believe and always have believed that invisible pink unicorns exist on Pluto. You say I have no proof? No need for proof, I say, for I have my faith.

I tell you, "there's no such thing as negative proof." So you can never disprove my invisible pink elephant on Mars.

The outside-box realization behind this is that 0 is not a negative number.

So say 2 + 2 = 4 in base 10 is true. For negative proof to exist, that would mean if someone presented that negative proof, then 2 + 2 = 4 can be disproved (base 10, all that crap).

So if there is no such thing as negative proof, then 2 + 2 = 4 cannot be disproven whatsoever.

For negative proof to exist, then it means sometimes 2 + 2 = 4 is true and sometimes it's false.

So it's very easy to comprehend why there's no such thing as negative proof.

So as you say to me "you can't disprove my ridiculous belief," I say "Fine, even though the proof of your ridiculous belief is 0," you can say "but 0 is not a negative number, you have no negative proof of what I believe" and I'll say I agree with you - 0 is not a negative number.

7/30/2009.