A
Declaration of My Beliefs To My Family and Friends
And to all of Humanity
To my beloved Tessie.
To my children Kim and Rick and to Rick's wife, Heather, and their beautiful children - my Grandson, George and Granddaughter, Rebecca.
To Verl and to Joan.
To my siblings Pat, Chuck's spouse Marilyn and Bernadette and her spouse Troy.
To all my nieces and nephews and their children.
To all my cousins and their families.
I think of you, my family, as I write these words.
To all of my friends and acquaintances.
To all that I have known and to all that have known me.
To all of humankind.
To any power or awareness that may hear or read these words.
I feel compelled to express my beliefs.
As a child I professed a belief in God and in the tenets of the Catholic Church. I professed this belief with strong conviction and free will. I practiced my religion with equally strong fervor for many years into adulthood. My faith in God and the Hereafter was unshakable until well into my third decade of life. But then, I began to have doubts. Throughout my life I felt that it was strange that God would allow such divergent methods of honoring Him. I considered myself fortunate to have been included in His one true flock. Yet I was always troubled by the concept of a just God allowing so much human misery of innocents throughout the world, especially those in impoverished third world countries. And if there were but one God, how could He allow His Muslim children to so hate the infidel Christians and Jews? How could he allow such hatred among Christians like prevailed in Northern Ireland between Catholics and Protestants. How could He limit the promise of eternal life to only a select portion of humanity as I had been taught.
From these seeds of doubt, a tree of inner confusion and divergence began to sprout. The more I pondered these issues, the more my skepticism grew. I saw hypocrisy, not only in my own church but throughout the religious communities. Where was the human harmony that should emit from the practicers of brotherly love? I saw instead racial bias and greed as prolific within the churches as without. Where was love and forgiveness? I saw instead hatred and revenge. Where was the morality of "Gods children?"
I became disillusioned with religion and concerned about the prospects for the survival of such an ill guided human race. With the advent of the nuclear age we had achieved the ability to erase all life from this planet. With our greed and waste and pollution we were ruining the lifeblood of our environment. The unchecked crime, violence and terrorism was diminishing the quality of life throughout the world. Religion seemed to be more of a contributor to human ill will than a model of serenity. Catholics were fighting Protestants over religion in Northern Ireland. Jews were fighting Muslims in the middle east over religion. In this country, one of the last bastions of racial divide was, and is, in our churches.
As a believer in science I became concerned about the resurgence of right wing fundamentalism in our government and in our public schools. I could not understand how in spite our tremendous strides in technology, school boards could be considering teaching creationism in our public scools while questioning and ridiculing evolution. In spite our advances in worker productivity, our standards of living and quality of life seemed to be going backwards.
Through most of my fourth decade I struggled with these gnawing doubts about my religion. Eventually I came to believe that each person, with his or her God given freewill, must come to their own views on these matters. At first I was satisfied with the notion that perhaps the tenets of faith were not as divinely inspired as religionists claim them to be. I still believed in some of the concepts of Christianity like "love thy neighbor as thy self" and the nonviolence and forgiveness of "turning the other cheek" but I became convinced that many of the beliefs of all the worlds religions were man made hogwash. I still believed in God and eternal life in heaven but I completely abandoned any confidence in any religion.
Finally in 1975, at age 39, I attended the Defense Systems Management College at Fort Belvoir, Virginia. It's kind of the Defense Department's equivilant of an MBA. This school offered a curriculum of high level management techniques including a course they named Systems Decision Analysis or SDA as we students called it. SDA was basically a course in scientific decision making. Its purpose was to teach us how to make complex decisions in the face of uncertainty. Strong use of probability statistics is included. A popular application of the techniques taught in this course are the decisions made by NASA in deciding to launch a space shuttle. NASA may pick some number, say 99.5%, as their decision point to launch or abort a given mission. This means that unless their SDA says there is a better than a 99.5% probability of success, they will not launch the flight. What it also means is that using that number they can expect a failed mission in about one of every 200 launches. The probability of success for an airplane flight from say Washington DC to Los Angeles is much higher than that. The probability of a crash is more in the area of one in several million. The odds of an airplane crashing are so low that most of us take that flight without much concern. If, however the probability of success of an airplane flight was only 99.5%, few of would venture to take such a ride. At NASA however they accept a lower level probability of success as a calculated risk. If they waited until their chance of failure was less than one in a million we'd still be waiting for the first manned orbital flight, much less having gone to the moon and back.
Using SDA involves highly complex factors which may affect the success of a given mission. Factors like weather conditions, fuel temperature, rocket efficiency, payload weight and countless others are all applied to the SDA equation. NASA has complete teams of scientists processing the decision prior to and throughout the flight. We don't need teams of scientists to determine the probability of success of every airplane ride we embark on. We know intuitively that the odds are pretty good so we just accept that and take the flight.
While we were learning the concepts of SDA at the DSMC the instructors would ask us students for examples of everyday type decisions that we would like to use to practice on. I remember one popular decision was related to the Redskins winning the football game on the coming Sunday. We would factor in such considerations as the weather and the health of the star quarterback. We would check the weather forecast. If cold and snowy weather was predicted we would incorporate the relative past success of the Redskins and their opponents was in cold snowy weather. If the probability of their star quarterback not playing was high the Redskin's probability of success would go up. We used all sorts of day to day issues of this type as examples to learn the techniques of SDA. Since, during this time of my life I was going through a lot of soul searching about religion and God, I several times suggested that we use SDA to determine the probability of the existence of God. I could never get the instructors to accept my challenge and at first I could easily understand why. If word got out that the Defense Department was doing scientific inquiry into the existence of God it would not go over well with the politicians or with the religionist taxpayers. Later I came to believe that perhaps challenging the notion of Gods existence was unacceptable, even to these supposedly objective teachers of science.
At DSMC I learned enough about SDA to understand the basic concepts of that science. Furthermore, I became convinced that if a true objective scientific SDA analysis were made of the existence of God, as most people understand Him, the probability would be very low. I believe that the probability of such a God would be less than one in a million, perhaps less that one in a billion. The probability of any one of the worlds major religions being valid would be much lower. Based on these new found beliefs I was at long last able to come to grips with my doubts about my religion - about all religions.
I now believe that all religions are false mythology. I believe the scientific evidence supports my beliefs. I believe that objective scientific analysis of these issues would support the probability of their validity to be extremely low. I believe that all people of science, that know and understand this scientific process, either agree with me or it is incumbent on them to find the error of my views. I believe it is incumbent on the scientific community to conduct a thorough scientific analysis of these issues and to report their results to us less knowledgeable masses. And if I'm right, which I'm sure I am, then it is incumbent on us humans to pursue our betterment in the light of reality, not in the darkness of superstition and falsehoods. It is up to us humans to save this world. We alone are the shepherds of our destiny.
I do not criticize those that do not agree with my beliefs. I once believed very differently myself. The soul wrenching agony that I went through to arrive at my current views was very difficult. I am critical, however, of the scientific community for ignoring my positions. Here is the most profound issue in the existence of life and awareness and it is either ignored or maligned by learned people.
Having come to these beliefs - I feel it is my duty to my fellow humans, especially to my family and friends, that I openly express them. This is what I believe.
I do hereby declare that I, for one, do not believe in God. I believe that when our life is over here on this earth, that we shall cease to exist except in the memories of those close to us and in the computer banks of our society. Let all humans know that these are my views. I do not fear death or eternal damnation. I love life and am grateful for having been granted this gift. I love all humans.
Everyone has their own personal views on issues of our existence. Most people have accepted the teachings of the culture and religion that they were born into. Sometimes people change or modify their beliefs. Many people feel that their personal beliefs are private and keep them to themselves. Others feel compelled to not only express thier views but to evangelize others to them. These are my beliefs. You are free to accept them or reject them.
May the good forces be with you and with me and with all of humanity!!
I would appreciate any and all comments regarding my views.
I can be reached at: Dick Wilz - Louisa, VA 23093
Email Me at dwilz@firstva.com
This Section was last updated on 30 August, 2009.