TED Community » Charles Purdy

More About Me

I'm passionate about

Ousting theocratic concepts and agendas in our legislatures acting as trip wires to our scientific progress and ushering in a new era of enlightenment. We must leave behind the folly of mythology.

An idea worth spreading

More research and funding for the repair of the human brain. Regenerative tissue, micro robotics, cell implants, etc.

After 9/11, I don't want to hear ANYONE'S religious beliefs. Bend the mind, not the knee. Live free, think free, unshackled to man-made deities created by zealots with their own agendas stuck in the mire of Dark Age concepts. Enjoy your planet, play nice with others, clean up your messes, and eat a cookie. How hard is it, people?

Talk to me about

Anything out of the box. I don't swim in the mainstream.

Comments

• TEDCred score: +1.00 TEDCred reflects your contribution to the TED community.

• +1

  A comment on Theme: Is There a God?

  Oct 22 2012: I do not wish to debate the existence of God. I merely want to stress the need for critical thinking when one desires to turn away from logic and reason, to go window shopping for a deity, fully prepared to live a life of sacrifice and dedication to an overseeing entity that will now look down in judgement daily to determine one's deserving of the all access ticket to some eternal amusement park or the eternal flames in a furnace of damnation. This is the message contained in the book of Jewish folklore, The Bible.
  
  That book you're about to use as a primer for your life you are told is the "Word of God" written by human hands divinely inspired. Ask yourself this: Why would a divine being choose such a poor device of transport to convey its existence and plan for humanity? Written tomes have to be translated for all cultures, adding to the probability of misinterpretation and dilution of original purity. They may not reach certain areas of the globe to be read, and are subject to manipulation of those with agendas adding illegitimate content.
  
  We as biological organisms already have a communication device installed during embryonic development . It is called DNA, and it is the blueprint for a species that has built in instructions for survival, social activities, emotions, and spiritual awareness. Here is where a creator would leave encoded information pertaining to proper life choices. When you look at a beautiful sunset as the sun slips below the horizon line and are awed with humble respect for the workings of our planet, that is the creator's input for you. When you are moved to tears witnessing the birth of a healthy first born child and give quiet thanks to whatever divine processes initiated this miracle, you are spiritually aware and get a warm glow as a reciprocal "You're Welcome." When you see photographs from the Hubble of newly formed galaxies, you are aware the creation is still going on. All you need to do is be awed and continue life.

• A comment on Talk: Jason McCue: Terrorism is a failed brand

  Oct 18 2012: Interesting approach, Jason, but I have a better idea. It takes funding to keep these maniacal zealots in business and we know what countries are financing these cowardly attacks. Unfortunately some of them are the ones we buy our nation's lifeblood from to keep our gas guzzling, single occupancy SUV's hurdling down the highways to go to strip malls and tanning salons. When and if we can ever break this connection, a new avenue will open up. Alert all the countries pumping money into these groups that we have a list of strategic targets in their major cities and every time a terrorist attack succeeds, we will launch a cruise missile to a designated target, working our way up in ascending order to their capital city's government buildings. Very convincing, and cost effective. It only costs about 1.3 million dollars to target and launch versus billions a month with boots on the ground. Money well spent.
• +6

  A comment on Talk: John Lloyd: An animated tour of the invisible

  Oct 17 2012: Alas..yet another glimpse behind the curtain. We only see the facades in our mortal existence. Are the answers to the mysteries of the universe contained in this invisible, subatomic universe within a universe? Is it all layers of existences like an onion skin? What if the Grand Designer of it all, the one who laid down the foundation of physics and universal laws of maths and matter resides not in the heavens above where we cast our eyes to beseech guidance in troubled times, but on a neutrino housed within one atom within a molecule within a cluster of receptor cells that spark the mechanical functions of a mite perched atop a tick foraging on a grain of sand on an endless beach below our feet? Curiouser and curiouser, we follow white rabbits down burrowed holes seeking the answer to it all. We meet hookah smoking caterpillars that hand us ancient tomes instructing us to subjugate our existence to endless worship of a man-made genie who has created a "look, but don't touch" world for us as a testing ground for our faith. Refusing to turn our backs on logic and reason, we continue to stumble down the same trodden paths as others before us in search of the ultimate truths.
  
  I am a 61 year old man and I can only tell you of my failure to find any truths to it all. I went window shopping for a religion in my youth, thinking I had to have one with me at all times, finding not comforts for the soul but placebos for the huddled masses frightened of the realities of life and looking forward to their imagined paradises in the afterlife. I ended my search and found having a Swiss Army knife handy at all times more useful.
• +1

  A reply on Talk: Richard Dawkins: Militant atheism

  Oct 17 2012: I can't believe my eyes. Even here at TED I find whimsical debate regarding a compilation of Jewish folklore and fables offered up as empirical proof of the existence of a divine entity subjugated to an existence of monitoring the activities of the billions of organic, carbon-based offshoots from primordial pools, infused with a DNA helix unique by only a few layers from an onion skin, in order to determine who gets the all access passes to some eternal amusement park as a reward for toeing the line in servitude, or damning those that frolicked and cavorted in free will to an everlasting furnace.
  
  All of you adherents of this book of babble, a pious placebo that gives you a warm and fuzzy feeling of smug elitism, time for your wake-up call: This whole galaxy is nothing more than bacteria cells inhabiting a fungus grown in a petri dish long discarded in a waste bin in some other-dimensional lab. We are all about as significant as a mite on a tick foraging on a grain of sand in an endless beach to our physicist creator. His son had plucked the dish from the garbage and has been keeping us like those Sea Monkeys once advertised in comic books. He got bored with us and poured some Drano in the tank. Notice we're heating up?
  
  Enjoy your time on this spinning rock, people, before the lights go out. So simple.

• A comment on Conversation: Debate: Our culture isn't adapting to our rapidly progressing technology.

  Oct 15 2012: Hi, Ted Lover, and thanks....I am thrilled I found this little oasis of rational, open-minded thinkers. I'd like to start a think tank forum for all of us to come up with what we think would be solutions to the social, economic, and political ailments wreaking havoc presently. I feel we are at a perilous brink looking down into a dark abyss. Sharon, in her comment above, is right on the money with her statement regarding the frightened.
  
  It seems our government is not providing any solutions and the "trickle down' sprinkler has been shut off as the fund providers we once had are now pumping money into campaigns to elect guard dogs to protect their stashes. The Mid East is about to supernova which will draw us into yet another campaign we can not afford to get involved in. And the beat goes on.....

• A reply on Conversation: Debate: Our culture isn't adapting to our rapidly progressing technology.

  Oct 15 2012: Thank you, Sharon, for added data that I wasn't aware of. It's sad to acknowledge this "selling out" for funding going on.
• +2

  A comment on Conversation: Debate: Our culture isn't adapting to our rapidly progressing technology.

  Oct 12 2012: You can't impede the progress of technology for the sake of those unwilling to embrace the realities of life in the 21st Century. Look what we have setting trip wires for society's adaptation to technological advancements and critical thinking: Theocratic Neanderthals in our legislature, boards of education and govt. bureaus shackled to man made deities and mythologies wishing to cast off the sciences as demonic, and march us back to the Dark Ages with their folly. Pastors pumping out the bilge, and the congregations wallowing in the polluted concepts of a Young Earth and Six Day Creation disregarding the vast tonnage of contrary evidence and casting off scientific proofs as trickery. The "dumbing down" of this nation is not an imagined theory, it is a sad fact.
  
  We once turned to the halls of academia to welcome the next vanguard of progressive thinkers, movers and shakers, and independent thinkers. Alas, their numbers have diminished, the results of a latchkey childhood as the guidance and motivation of the parental units are taken out of the picture and are forced into the workplaces to generate the incomes needed for survival. Dinnertime input/output sessions between the family units have been replaced with notes on a refrigerator. The bright beacons we once had to guide others to higher realms of thinking and understanding are now dimmed and apathetic, seeking shelter from the harsh realities of an economically crippled nation in the virtual realms of World Of Warcraft.
  
  Water will seek its own level, we will pick up and rebuild from the tsunami of global economic meltdown that washed over us. There then must come yet another tidal wave washing over the land ushering in a New Era of Enlightenment. Our evolution as a species depends on it. The Universe demands it.