World views with no God

[Boots]

      I want you to ask yourself how this complex computer  you're setting on was found, Of course someone had created it , Then how this complex vast universe was created ,should have a creator our god (Allah)                             

We know how computers were built; how the principles leading up to them were discovered, how the parts were manufactured . . .all these are matters of historical fact.

Your retreat to "goddidit" when presented with "how coudl this universe have been created??" is an argument from incredulity.  Any time anyone can answer "I don't know" to a question like this, screaming "GODDIDIT" is the easiest--and laziest--thing in the world.

Science is hard.  It takes time.  And it is eager to find, and fix, its mistakes.

Religion is easy.  It's got all the answers laid out, all punishments and rewards spelled out (even though there are thousands of interpretations of these for every "Holly [sic] Book" out there).  And it cannot accept arguments to the contrary.

I know where I'm putting my money.

[Samuelke]

Well ok here's another, I have what's called fibromyalgia and mine is the worst in my back and neck but goes everywhere in my body to my legs and arms and toes and hands. Torwards the beginning I went through tons of doctors and specialist and they all told me it was something different untill a rheumatologist finally got it right. But they all put me on pain killers and for a while I was addicted to them. I've been of them for some time now and feel better off of them, of course I still have my bad days as well. But there were many times that I was ready to throw the towel in and give up, I was asking God why, why me and why now so early in life? But I started to realize soon what he was doing with all this in my life and how he was teaching me through it. I started then to pray for God to give me strength in this and to help me with my pain. Starting then and still to this day I do that and every time I say that prayer to him instantly after I feel relief in the pain and it eases up. This is another incident that happened and still goes on that builds my faith, it isn't just one of any of these so you can't call them each a coincidence because because of the number of them and they all back each other up. If it were not for all the different aspects that have built my faith and belief he would not be as real as he is to me and I wouldn't believe. I will post another here tonight at some time.

[Quesi]

Well ok here's another, I have what's called fibromyalgia and mine is the worst in my back and neck but goes everywhere in my body to my legs and arms and toes and hands. Torwards the beginning I went through tons of doctors and specialist and they all told me it was something different untill a rheumatologist finally got it right. But they all put me on pain killers and for a while I was addicted to them. I've been of them for some time now and feel better off of them, of course I still have my bad days as well. But there were many times that I was ready to throw the towel in and give up, I was asking God why, why me and why now so early in life? But I started to realize soon what he was doing with all this in my life and how he was teaching me through it. I started then to pray for God to give me strength in this and to help me with my pain. Starting then and still to this day I do that and every time I say that prayer to him instantly after I feel relief in the pain and it eases up. This is another incident that happened and still goes on that builds my faith, it isn't just one of any of these so you can't call them each a coincidence because because of the number of them and they all back each other up. If it were not for all the different aspects that have built my faith and belief he would not be as real as he is to me and I wouldn't believe. I will post another here tonight at some time.

First of all, I am really sorry that you are facing such pain so young in life.  I had no idea that fibromyalgia affected people so young.

Listen, pain management is a complex issue, and a very personal issue.  I would argue that your act of prayer taps into some part of your brain, and you enter a calmer or meditative state as a result of your own actions.  But if it is working for you and you are able to function, I would certainly not try and talk you out of a pain management technique that works. 

But I would like to tell you a story. 

My beloved father suffered from a progressive form of arthritis that hit him fairly young.  He walked with a cane by the time he was in his 30's, and suffered very real pain.  My dad was an atheist, and he had no god to help him.  So he helped himself.  I would watch him sometimes, put himself into a sort of meditative state. 

I also noticed that when he was in a museum, or when he was walking somewhere he really wanted to walk, his pain diminished.  He would walk long and far, and it was clear that he was able to block out the pain.  But when my mom dragged him to the mall, he could not last a half hour.

He wasn't faking at the mall.  It was real.  But when he was in a situation that was unpleasant to him, and it required walking, walking was very difficult. 

You have learned to do a set of tricks on your brain to shut down some of the pain.  I hope that you continue to learn more ways to manage the pain.  But mostly I hope a better treatment is discovered, (by scientists and researchers) sooner rather than later, that will relieve the symptoms. 

[LoriPinkAngel]

@ Samuelke -- if you are able to acheive some pain relief with prayer you may want to look into Reiki.  I don't know whether you are in an area where it is available.  It requires the ability to focus & use positive energy to assist with pain management.

[3sigma]

Starting then and still to this day I do that and every time I say that prayer to him instantly after I feel relief in the pain and it eases up.

The cause of fibromyalgia is unknown, but it is known that psychological factors such as stress and anxiety contribute to the severity of its symptoms. It is not surprising then that comforting placebos such as prayer alleviate the symptoms.

Again, your belief that your God is somehow involved is yet another baseless assumption. Show us that this God of yours is real, but please give us something more than misapprehensions and fallacies.

[3sigma]

@ Samuelke -- if you are able to acheive some pain relief with prayer you may want to look into Reiki.

Sure, why not, Reiki has about the same efficacy as prayer.

[JeffPT]

Well ok here's another, I have what's called fibromyalgia and mine is the worst in my back and neck but goes everywhere in my body to my legs and arms and toes and hands. Torwards the beginning I went through tons of doctors and specialist and they all told me it was something different untill a rheumatologist finally got it right.

Fibromyalgia is classically what doctors will say when their diagnosis is something akin to, "I don't know what the hell is wrong with you, so you have fibromyalgia".  The term fibromyalgia actually means 'pain in the muscle fibers'.  It doesn't tell you where it comes from, how you got it, or what is happening.  As you can imagine with such a situation, the symptoms are incredibly diverse for patients with this condition.  You can see all sorts of strange things and doctors will still classify it as fibromyalgia.  I've seen a lot of them as patients in the past.  It's a very common diagnosis.     

But they all put me on pain killers and for a while I was addicted to them.

Sorry to hear that.  I hope you're not addicted now.

I've been of them for some time now and feel better off of them, of course I still have my bad days as well. But there were many times that I was ready to throw the towel in and give up, I was asking God why, why me and why now so early in life?

When we are in difficult situations with seemingly no end in sight, it is human nature to ask for help.  We do it when we are young and our parents come to our rescue.  When we are older, there is nobody there to ask, but we still ask on instinct.  You're just talking to yourself though. 

But I started to realize soon what he was doing with all this in my life and how he was teaching me through it.

So God couldn't teach you things without giving you unbearable pain?  Do you find that pain is a good motivator for learning that you couldn't get through other ways?  What did you learn from it? 

Couldn't it be that you just have a physical condition that is affecting your body and there is no one to blame for it? 

I started then to pray for God to give me strength in this and to help me with my pain.

Why?  If God gave you the pain, it must be good for you, right?  Shouldn't you be asking for more of it? 

Why would you ask him for strength to deal with it instead of asking for it to stop?  And why would God give you strength to deal with it, if he wants you to have it in the first place? 

Starting then and still to this day I do that and every time I say that prayer to him instantly after I feel relief in the pain and it eases up.

I doubt that's the case.  It makes no sense that God would give you strength to deal with a pain he gave you in the first place. 

If I punched my son in the face every time I wanted to teach him something and then I hugged him after he did what I asked him to do, would that make me a good father?  This is what God is doing to you if he exists. 

The other possibility is that you just have physical pain from a condition that you can't seem to get rid of, and that God plays no role in any of it because he doesn't exist. 

This is another incident that happened and still goes on that builds my faith, it isn't just one of any of these so you can't call them each a coincidence because because of the number of them and they all back each other up. If it were not for all the different aspects that have built my faith and belief he would not be as real as he is to me and I wouldn't believe. I will post another here tonight at some time.

Did you know 29,000 children die every single day from starvation?  Millions of people die every year of cancer in horrible ways.  Yet you sit here and think that God makes your pain ease up every time you pray to him.  That's utterly ridiculous.  The pain relief you get is in your mind because you THINK God is there helping you though it.  Your mind is what processes pain, and it's your mind that tells you it's less when you pray. 

It's incredibly narcissistic to think that God favors you with a little bit of pain relief yet lets so many others suffer and die.  Can you stop thinking about yourself for a minute and look around at the world?  If God relieves your suffering, but does nothing for those 29,000 kids, do you really think God is worthy of your worship at all?  Seriously? 

@ Samuelke -- if you are able to acheive some pain relief with prayer you may want to look into Reiki.  I don't know whether you are in an area where it is available.  It requires the ability to focus & use positive energy to assist with pain management.

Don't do that.  Reiki does nothing.  You'd be wasting your money.  All the controlled studies that have been done show no evidence that reiki does anything for people.  Most of the time, the person doesn't even touch you.  They just put their hands a few centimeters above your skin and move them around as if they're doing something. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reiki 

Although, if you believe it works, the placebo effect you get by going through the treatment might give you some relief just like your god belief does.  Its not actual benefit though.  Any benefit you might get is in your head. 

There are no great treatments for fibromyalgia, and that's because a lot of times they have no clue what causes it.  The common recommendations are to eat right and exercise, which is no different than the common recommendations that everyone should follow to be healthy. 

[LoriPinkAngel]

@ Quesi - The post above is a perfect example of what I told you in my PM.

@ Samuelke -- I have patients who reported to me that Reiki was effective in their pain management regimen.  I also have patients who did not find it effective.  It is not curative by any means.  Pain relief is in your head.  Neurotransmitters in your brain send signals to the affected areas telling them whether or not to hurt.  Jeff is correct that many Drs use fibromayalgia as blanket dx when they can't pinpoint what exactly is wrong with you.  But knowing that doesn't make it any less painful does it?  If your faith helps you don't throw it away because it didn't help someone else.

Oh boy I'm going to get trashed for this stupid advice.

[Azdgari]

@ Quesi - The post above is a perfect example of what I told you in my PM.

Which you would have told her in a PM'd reply, except that you want everyone else to know that you're talking about the posting style JeffPT is using, behind his back.

[magicmiles]

@ Samuelke -- if you are able to acheive some pain relief with prayer you may want to look into Reiki.

Sure, why not, Reiki has about the same efficacy as prayer.

I agree with 3sigma Sam. It would be silly for you to try and achieve relief through unlikely sources. Much better to go back to the more likely sources which you know have not helped you.

[LoriPinkAngel]

@ Quesi - The post above is a perfect example of what I told you in my PM.

Which you would have told her in a PM'd reply, except that you want everyone else to know that you're talking about the posting style JeffPT is using, behind his back.

Apologies to Jeff, my PM was not referring to him specifically, I should have made that clear.  I see I am wrong again.  I'm trying to keep from posting comments & stay out of trouble but since I happen to have experience in pain management I did want to let Sam know an option he may not have tried.

[Azdgari]

I worded that poorly.  Not so much behind JeffPT's back, specifically, but behind everyone's back who isn't Quesi, collectively.

The problem, Lori, is that now people know that you were discussing that posting style, and have a comment on it.  I for one am curious as to what it is.  But all there is, is you saying to Quesi that it's a perfect example of something.

Picture a pair of guys walking past you.  One of them says to the other, "see, girls like that are exactly what I was talking about".  How would that make you feel?

[LoriPinkAngel]

I worded that poorly.  Not so much behind JeffPT's back, specifically, but behind everyone's back who isn't Quesi, collectively.

The problem, Lori, is that now people know that you were discussing that posting style, and have a comment on it.  I for one am curious as to what it is.  But all there is, is you saying to Quesi that it's a perfect example of something.

Picture a pair of guys walking past you.  One of them says to the other, "see, girls like that are exactly what I was talking about".  How would that make you feel?

Please see my edit, your response posted before I finished it.

[Anfauglir]

I only ask you to read in it and hear what this book says and if you haven't changed your mind then I'd be donkey

I have.  Does that mean you are?   

[Anfauglir]

Well ok here's .....

Actually Samuel, instead of "oh, here's another", how about answering the questions you've been asked about your first couple of stories?

See, I'm worried that you will tell a story, we'll question it, and then instead of responding you'll just go on to another glurge, and another, and another, until we get tired of rebutting points that you will ignore - which you may perceive as us conceding your point.

So how about answering a couple of the questions you've been asked about your first couple tales, hmm?  The meteor, and the Vietnamese boat trip?

[Garja]

to the OP: My brother in law summed it up best for me anyway.  "I worship the gods of Logic, Reason, Rational Thought, Critical Thinking, and Empathy."

To me this gets at the core of what I have come to believe over the last few months.  Reasonable, objective, evaluation of scientifically proven facts (and history); while showing care and compassion for my fellow human beings.  I may be a godless heathen, but I'm moral damnit! LOL

[Garja]

... To continue.  I actually feel that my life has significantly MORE meaning now that I no longer believe in God.  This feels like my one shot, there is no eternal life, there is no being in heaven dictating the behavior and attitudes of those around me. WE JUST ARE.  We exist, we have one opportunity in life to make a meaningfully positive impact on the world, or to do x, y, z... whatever you want from your life do it, and let that give you meaning.

IMO "God", just strips a lot of the meaning from life.  Everything is either predestined or at least you were created with God having the knowledge that you would complete xyz in your life.  If that's true, what is the point really?  Do you really have a choice in your life, or do you live in an ant farm that a petulant child can shake up like an etch-a-sketch, or come up and poor water into at any time?

[JeffPT]

Apologies to Jeff, my PM was not referring to him specifically, I should have made that clear.  I see I am wrong again.  I'm trying to keep from posting comments & stay out of trouble but since I happen to have experience in pain management I did want to let Sam know an option he may not have tried.

No need to apologize.  Even if the PM was about me and even if you don't like my personal posting style, I'm not offended by that.  I'd be way more upset if you found the logic and reasoning behind my posts to be lacking.  Did you find anything I said to Sam to be poorly thought out or poorly reasoned?  I'd like to know where, because I'll be the first (well, my wife would be the first) to admit that I'm not right all the time.   

Just be aware that I'm not like this in real life.   I'm a different person outside of this website, as most likely most of us are.  I'm not consumed by distaste for religion in my every day life.  I can't be.  I live in the bible belt.  They don't take kindly to non-believers down here. 

There are hundreds of options Sam probably has not tried.  Homeopathic elixirs, exorcisms, leeching, bleeding, all sorts of fun stuff that won't work either.  I, too, have a good bit of experience in pain management, and I try to give my patients evidenced based treatments and steer them clear of things which are unlikely to help.  As health care professionals we should do our best to encourage those types of treatments, don't you think?  Of course there are always alternative options, and Sam is free to try whatever treatment he wants, but I believe telling him that Reiki might help could be financially draining, and from an evidence stand point, it is on par with telling him to go out and buy some red crystals, some blue crystals, and to go have his palm read, as those might help too.  It would probably be a lot cheaper just to tell him about the miraculous healing power of superficially applied peanut butter. Rub it all over your back, Sam.  Chunky, not smooth. 

If Reiki had scientific research that supported it's use, we would just call it medicine.  Until then, its not medicine.  It's an appeal to the placebo effect.  That's why it works for some people.  Just like sugar pills can work for people who think they're downing a Vicodin.   

[Samuelke]

I understand that the meteor story is hard to believe or all of them for that matter, but in all my doubt and disbelief at the time I knew he was telling me something and it wasnt just by chance. It is hard for me to consider that even we are here by chance when I read so much science, math, and logic saying its impossible. For instance, just the human enzyme, which is just the building block to the gene and the cell, the probability of that coming about by chance is insane I can't remember the exacts off the top of my head. I am nowhere near adapt enough in all these subjects as many others are but that's why I'm trying to study more about all this but if anyone is interested I recommend looking into Francis Collins, John Lennox, and Ravi zacharias just find some of their videos all of them are much more capable then me at answering all the questions. Also it said in that story about the translator the bible pages were coming from the general of the camp someone had given him that bible as a present and he was using it to wipe when using the restroom.

[Garja]

the probability of that coming about by chance is insane I can't remember the exacts off the top of my head.

Beware of apologists when they start spouting that 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 chance stuff.... you can get pretty lose with how you crunch those numbers in order to get those ridiculously large numbers.  For instance they like to say that things had to happen 'all at once' in order to work, but thats not how chemistry/biology works. 

[Samuelke]

the probability of that coming about by chance is insane I can't remember the exacts off the top of my head.

Beware of apologists when they start spouting that 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 chance stuff.... you can get pretty lose with how you crunch those numbers in order to get those ridiculously large numbers.  For instance they like to say that things had to happen 'all at once' in order to work, but thats not how chemistry/biology works.

I have not heard that from any Christian theology and if some are saying this then that would be going against the belief of the bible really. We can interpret pretty well some of creation from genesis but in ally reality not one of us was there to see so the belief is that only God knows. But we can see very clearly in genesis there are many steps stated that he took to create everything and no where does it say and poof it was all there.

[Anfauglir]

I understand that the meteor story is hard to believe or all of them for that matter, but in all my doubt and disbelief at the time I knew he was telling me something and it wasnt just by chance.....

Since you "know" it didn't appear by chance, then you ARE saying that your god "engineered a significant change in the nature of reality purely to assist your faith".  I therefore repeat my follow-on question to that point - as well as the subsidiary question 2.

1A) How would you comment on those people here who were also once believers, but who (despite fervert prayer) never got the sign you were given?  Further, you realise that you have just asserted the existence of a being who will make dramatic changes to reality for the sake of some kid's wavering faith.  Given that you assert a directly interventionist god, why famine?  Why child abuse?  Why anything that god isn't keen on?  You don't even have to have him jumping in and taking physical action - if he is so keen on directly observable signs, why not just have something similar when one does something bad?

2) Was the meteor visible to anyone else on the planet?  What if (say) a Muslim was questioning the existence of Allah at just that point?  They saw YOUR meteor, and assumed it was a specific sign from them, so YOUR wavering has led to someone else moving further away from the one true faith.

2a) Why would your god value your faith over that of others?  Why would a god that - allegedly - wants a  relationship with everyone do something so misinterpretable as being the actions of a different god?

I know that you will find these questions difficult to answer.  They are hard questions for someone who has never really thought about their faith and what they believe....and what that implies.

[Garja]

I have not heard that from any Christian theology and if some are saying this then that would be going against the belief of the bible really. We can interpret pretty well some of creation from genesis but in ally reality not one of us was there to see so the belief is that only God knows. But we can see very clearly in genesis there are many steps stated that he took to create everything and no where does it say and poof it was all there.

Sorry, my fault, I was not specific.  I said "all at once".  What I was talking about was that, sometimes, certainly not EVERY time... When you see those huge probabilities they are sometimes saying things like a single cell, or a bacteria, or even something like the phospho-lipid bi layer had to happen "all at once".  The odds of that happening "all at once" is ridiculous enough to be laughable.

Another one of "the odds" I have heard stated (though not directly what you are talking about I understand), is the odds of Jesus, or any other one person completing the number of prophesies stated in the OT.  This however would assume that the person/people who WROTE the NT had no knowledge of the content of the OT, AND would assume that those things actually happened.  Since the former is certainly false alone means that probabilities are useless in this context.

By and large when I hear one of those guys talking probability I would like to hear EXACTLY how they came up with those numbers, over what PERIOD OF TIME are we talking about (ie the odds of something happening in any given second are remote, but the odds of something EVER happening are significantly higher).  Math isn't even something I am terribly strong in, but I know enough that statistics can be manipulated to say pretty much whatever you want them to.  Thats a crime that many people beyond this subject are guilty of.

[screwtape]

I am nowhere near adapt enough in all these subjects as many others are

So you are not actually qualified to offer an opinion, are you? 

That is a peeve of mine.  When people completely ignorant of a subject feel the right to disagree and dismiss experts in the field without any grounds.  "I don't know the first thing about economics, but I know in my heart that reducing taxes on the rich will create more jobs"

[Samuelke]

I understand that the meteor story is hard to believe or all of them for that matter, but in all my doubt and disbelief at the time I knew he was telling me something and it wasnt just by chance.....

Since you "know" it didn't appear by chance, then you ARE saying that your god "engineered a significant change in the nature of reality purely to assist your faith".  I therefore repeat my follow-on question to that point - as well as the subsidiary question 2.

1A) How would you comment on those people here who were also once believers, but who (despite fervert prayer) never got the sign you were given?  Further, you realise that you have just asserted the existence of a being who will make dramatic changes to reality for the sake of some kid's wavering faith.  Given that you assert a directly interventionist god, why famine?  Why child abuse?  Why anything that god isn't keen on?  You don't even have to have him jumping in and taking physical action - if he is so keen on directly observable signs, why not just have something similar when one does something bad?

2) Was the meteor visible to anyone else on the planet?  What if (say) a Muslim was questioning the existence of Allah at just that point?  They saw YOUR meteor, and assumed it was a specific sign from them, so YOUR wavering has led to someone else moving further away from the one true faith.

2a) Why would your god value your faith over that of others?  Why would a god that - allegedly - wants a  relationship with everyone do something so misinterpretable as being the actions of a different god?

I know that you will find these questions difficult to answer.  They are hard questions for someone who has never really thought about their faith and what they believe....and what that implies.

Well your hitting a whole lot uh different points here I'll try my best to give a response to all. I'll start with saying yes I do believe he jumps in at certain times to do things but it is only on his limited basis because he can't just always jump in It would end up throwing to many other things out of balance. Now next I'd say that praying is at first for all people hard to understand but I truly believe a thorough reading of the bible will help with this. In the many things it says on prayer one is how the more  doubt you have the harder it is for the prayer to be answered so in turn the more you trust in him the more likely it is. I would also like to hear about some of these believers experiences from what is and how did they come to the belief. In my own experience I've found that it isn't normally asking for him to give you something or do something in your life for you, unless your asking for strength and wisdom those he says ask and you shal receive not material things. The bible teaches us that what we know and what we want are far different then what he knows and what we want. Many many times in my life years have gone by before I realized that God answered a certain prayer because there have been times when I've been looking for a certain answer and blind to what he was actually trying to get through. I can blind myself to it though in many different ways. And really I promise the signs are always there it's just a matter a few things, the absolute best way to understand and interpret these signs is to read the bible, not just prayer and my relationship with him but the combination of that and reading the word more then anything helps me see these signs. Next this world of good and bad or evil, is the only reality that can produce the love that can be found in ours, where people will go out of there community and society and help people they don't know at all and get nothing out of helping them. The free will we have has it's ramifications and without them our reality would be much different.
The second question I'd say yeah I can't discount that possibility of something like that happening but that's all it is a possibility. I also feel though when a close examination is done Christianity among all other religions is the only one I see that is true and coherent, I think it works out logically and if you disagree then we can discuss that.

This was one of many things that assemble my belief into what it is and if you think that Christianity isn't as believable or true compared to other religions what are your reasons why?

I have done a large amount of research into my faith and religions of all types and other views. If you think I haven't that's ok with me. And this is also to another post about how I was saying I'm not the best in all the areas to be the one explaining but I was just referring to the fact that there are many people who have dedicated their lives to understanding these things so obviously they know more then me that's why I reference to them. But I'm on here because over the last seven years learning about all sides of this debate has become a passion a deep one at that, of mine. So I do think that I am capable of doing these things but I don't at all think I'm the best in any way.

[Aaron123]

I'll start with saying yes I do believe he jumps in at certain times to do things but it is only on his limited basis because he can't just always jump in It would end up throwing to many other things out of balance.

What does this even mean?

In the many things it says on prayer one is how the more  doubt you have the harder it is for the prayer to be answered so in turn the more you trust in him the more likely it is.

So how do you verify this?

Many many times in my life years have gone by before I realized that God answered a certain prayer because there have been times when I've been looking for a certain answer and blind to what he was actually trying to get through. I can blind myself to it though in many different ways. And really I promise the signs are always there it's just a matter a few things, the absolute best way to understand and interpret these signs is to read the bible, not just prayer and my relationship with him but the combination of that and reading the word more then anything helps me see these signs.

How do you verify that this is answered prayers, rather than you using your imagination to tie together unrelated things?

[stuffin]

How do you verify that this is answered prayers, rather than you using your imagination to tie together unrelated things?

I'm deviating slightly, but your comment got me thinking;

The only prayers which can be justified statisticlly are the ones god answers.

That sure seems like a xian mindset.

[jdawg70]

In the many things it says on prayer one is how the more  doubt you have the harder it is for the prayer to be answered so in turn the more you trust in him the more likely it is.

You make it sound as if a person's sincerity has power over god.  That is, the more doubt I have in my prayer, the more difficult it is for god to respond to the request, rather than he being more unwilling to respond to the request.

Do I have that right?

[jdawg70]

I'll start with saying yes I do believe he jumps in at certain times to do things but it is only on his limited basis because he can't just always jump in It would end up throwing to many other things out of balance.

What does this even mean?

Haven't you read god's best-selling memoirs?  Every time he steps in to do something he screws something else up.  The g-man can't fix one thing without thoroughly breaking something else (assuming he even fixes the thingie he intended to fix in the first place).  He's kind of like a cheap auto mechanic.