Why should I believe? This is the question I can't seem to answer. There appears to be no good reason for me to believe in god, despite the fact that some may insist I have to. If that is the case, then I don't see why I have free will to decide in the first place. Given that, if belief in god requires faith, evidence for it cannot exist, I am free to understand my reality without including a creator or almighty being in the picture. I have found it to be quite pleasant to the point where I often feel sorry for those who do believe. I suspect that they do not want my pity, though, as bearing a cross of their own has some significance to them. As it stands, the subordination and guilt is not appealing to me when I don't even feel that the benefits are all that great.
Let's start with this lifetime. One claim of faith is that it will make you happy. We can use research to help us estimate our relative happiness levels in any given situation. Dan Gilbert explained this in his TED lecture. It doesn't matter if you just lost your leg or if you just won the lottery, in 3 months, you'll be just as happy as if you had experienced the other. No amount of divine euphoria will sustain because it will normalize. If someone were to plead to me that giving my life to Jesus will make me happier than ever, I would simply point out that my extreme happiness would become a normalcy and thus lose its charm. After all, happiness is a relative state; we can only comprehend being happy because we know what being sad is. Remove sadness and you no longer have appreciation for happiness. Even if you claim that pride plays a part in the normalcy, the expectancy, of happiness, you still cannot contend with the happiness we manufacture when we need it most.
The difference between real happiness and manufactured happiness lies in how you obtain it. In the end, though, they are both just as effective. While, from an honest perspective, I would much rather achieve my happiness through a positive occurrence (being the best at playing a game, for instance) instead of through accepting and owning up to a negative (acknowledging that I suck at games and just playing for the experience), the two opposite situations have different implications on future avenues for happiness. If I become used to positive happiness, it takes increasingly more positive things to placate my high dopamine levels and maintain that happiness. However, if my happiness comes from my acceptance of my reality, it does not take much to give me a little endorphin rush. This is all to say that Jesus cannot make me happy without also teaching me to suffer. I can get that from anyone, not just the son of god.
There is another aspect of belief that I admit to being nonplussed about. That is the community aspect. Obviously, if you go to church, you form friendships within your community and you become a part of a large support group network. For agnostics who have fallen out of faith from the inside, losing their religious friends is one of the harshest realities they face when considering leaving their religion. For myself, I could not imagine living in a world where everyone agreed with me. In fact, one of the main reasons why I moved to New York City 5 years ago was because of the diversity of race and culture to be found here. The lure of assimilation is more of a repulsion.
I once read an article that stated that atheists get off easy because they don't believe anything that requires them to sacrifice. Beyond the near-sightedness of this claim (see the above statement about agnostics leaving their church), there is a flaw in the logic. Who says we have to suffer? Why does sacrifice have to come built into a given ideology? Why can't it come as a consequence of following one's dreams instead of following dogma? It seems to me that some paths through belief are paved by masochists who become, in turn, sadists that want others to feel their pain. Not only is this undesirable, it is quite creepy. It is said that Pope John Paul II was favored by his peers because he beat himself with his belt and slept on the floor for penance. Why would a sane person want this?
Back to the evidence point. I think it goes without saying that I could not possibly unlearn everything I know about cosmology, biology, logic, and philosophy simply to believe. If I were to have faith, I would need to either find something real that contradicts my current knowledge or work the concept of god into a non-literal mental nook. This already feels like a boring tact. While there are very smart people who believe in god, it does not appear that any of the ones who originally began as atheists took the sane route of reasoning their way to belief. I think I would need something of a vision, a surreal experience, to pluck me from my rationality. Once my rationality is gone, though, there's no telling how far I would go to destroy every thought I ever had before.
Let's move on to the real fun, though; the afterlife. As the comedian Jim Jeffries points out, hell can't be as bad as Christians paint it. If god represents the light, then he is obviously beholden to sell his path as the way to go and the opposite path as a blatantly bad choice. However, if one admires the logic of Pascal's wager, then surely you'll appreciate this idea: the devil has no reason to punish those who advance his efforts. He would reward them, I think. If the guy is as bad and as crafty as everyone claims he is, then he would not dispose of his loyal agents. Because the bible is supposedly the word of god, it is admittedly a one-sided affair. Similarly, as other comedians have stated, heaven sounds like it is populated by the most boring people.
There isn't much in faith for me, I must say. As a happy, healthy, sane, smart and optimistic atheist, I don't know what anyone could offer me to make me desire otherwise. Even if they did offer it, that wouldn't sound like a savior to me. More like a soul monger... pardon me while I question the motives.
I have been challenged by one of my commenters, Kev, to prove the existence of a few things. I would normally respond in kind - through a comment, but I'm bored, so I'll take a stab at a few. It should be made clear that the commenter believes in god and I do not. He is challenging me on my logic.
Moral right & wrong
Being that many animals can grasp right and wrong on a basic level, it confuses me that anyone would suggest that morality comes from a holy origin. A dog understands benefit and detriment. Apes have a sense of humor. Elephants show emotions. Dolphin families spread culture. It doesn't take a human to understand right and wrong, so it makes sense that a man-god cannot be the only authority for morality. We, as human animals, have a natural internal sense of what is right and wrong, developed through the evolutionary process.
Human consciousness, the world outside yourself
I categorize this into the same bin as all the masturbatory existential questions we've all heard before. Is it such a leap to assume that... I think, therefore I am? Sometimes challenging reality is nothing more than an attempt to scuttle the debate before it advances onto the really interesting topics.
Love
It is apparent to me that everyone has their own interpretation of what love is. To a ravenous believer, "love" is the obsession they have for their savior. To a romantic, love is the longing they have for the object of their desire. To me, love is an intense loyalty felt toward those who have endeared to me. In any case, as with all emotions, its origin rests with the chemistry of our brains. I cannot prove the existence of something that has a different definition to everyone who has experienced it.
Mathematical consistency to which all things are subject, Chaitin's number
This one has me tickled. As I stated in my entry, Proof of Evolution, nature does NOT adhere to mathematical models. There are no perfect circles, no perfect spirals. The Platonic model is not valid in the real world. I would suggest the book, The Black Swan, if you're interested in understanding the real mathematics of nature.
The existence of black holes, dark matter, strangelets
Strangelets, as I recall, are hypothetical, so nobody claims any proof of their existence, only conjectures. Dark matter is said to be detected through its gravitational effects on other matter. Black holes are detected by their distortion of the light emitted from galaxies farther away, like a giant lens, which bends toward them as it passes by on its way to Earth. They have also visibly devoured whole parts of galaxies, leaving a telltale sign of a massive source of gravity. Similarly, we can detect planets in other solar systems as they pass in front of their home stars and temporarily disrupt the light and radiation that we detect.
I didn't answer all of the challenges, but at some point I have to stop and make a point. There are good reasons for scientists to be doing what they do. First, if the basics of what we understand about our reality are wrong, then we, in turn, would not be able to have the technology that works so precisely in our daily lives. For example, if our understanding of chemistry were off by just a little bit, we wouldn't be able to have digital watches. It's as simple as that. Second, there are many things we don't know, but it is quite a different thing to say that what we DO know is wrong. There's a reason why you leave your house through the front door and not the window.
Moral right & wrong
Being that many animals can grasp right and wrong on a basic level, it confuses me that anyone would suggest that morality comes from a holy origin. A dog understands benefit and detriment. Apes have a sense of humor. Elephants show emotions. Dolphin families spread culture. It doesn't take a human to understand right and wrong, so it makes sense that a man-god cannot be the only authority for morality. We, as human animals, have a natural internal sense of what is right and wrong, developed through the evolutionary process.
Human consciousness, the world outside yourself
I categorize this into the same bin as all the masturbatory existential questions we've all heard before. Is it such a leap to assume that... I think, therefore I am? Sometimes challenging reality is nothing more than an attempt to scuttle the debate before it advances onto the really interesting topics.
Love
It is apparent to me that everyone has their own interpretation of what love is. To a ravenous believer, "love" is the obsession they have for their savior. To a romantic, love is the longing they have for the object of their desire. To me, love is an intense loyalty felt toward those who have endeared to me. In any case, as with all emotions, its origin rests with the chemistry of our brains. I cannot prove the existence of something that has a different definition to everyone who has experienced it.
Mathematical consistency to which all things are subject, Chaitin's number
This one has me tickled. As I stated in my entry, Proof of Evolution, nature does NOT adhere to mathematical models. There are no perfect circles, no perfect spirals. The Platonic model is not valid in the real world. I would suggest the book, The Black Swan, if you're interested in understanding the real mathematics of nature.
The existence of black holes, dark matter, strangelets
Strangelets, as I recall, are hypothetical, so nobody claims any proof of their existence, only conjectures. Dark matter is said to be detected through its gravitational effects on other matter. Black holes are detected by their distortion of the light emitted from galaxies farther away, like a giant lens, which bends toward them as it passes by on its way to Earth. They have also visibly devoured whole parts of galaxies, leaving a telltale sign of a massive source of gravity. Similarly, we can detect planets in other solar systems as they pass in front of their home stars and temporarily disrupt the light and radiation that we detect.
I didn't answer all of the challenges, but at some point I have to stop and make a point. There are good reasons for scientists to be doing what they do. First, if the basics of what we understand about our reality are wrong, then we, in turn, would not be able to have the technology that works so precisely in our daily lives. For example, if our understanding of chemistry were off by just a little bit, we wouldn't be able to have digital watches. It's as simple as that. Second, there are many things we don't know, but it is quite a different thing to say that what we DO know is wrong. There's a reason why you leave your house through the front door and not the window.
There's a term floating about that I have an epistemological problem with: irreducible complexity. The premise of this phrase is that the modern biological systems that make up our bodies and those in nature are too complex to have happened "by chance." To me, the use of this argument represents a lack of understanding of many different concepts: chaos, evolution, time, probability and history. Funny enough, these are the very subjects I've been studying over the last year, so I'm prepared to give a brief glance over them here.
To understand how our biological systems came to be so complex, you must understand the concept of a self-organizing system like evolution. The coupling of the chaos theory and natural selection perfectly explains it, but first, you must change your perspective to a very impersonal, time's eye view. The chaos theory states that in a given dynamical system (on the micro level, this would be the interaction of elements), while individual reactions are predictable, chains of reactions become exponentially more random. For instance, I was playing pool last night and I could accurately predict the angle of any ball bouncing off my cue-ball. I could not, however, guess what would happen to any particular ball on a break. With so many reactions happening that depend upon each other, the fate of any particular ball is completely up in the air.
Now that we understand the randomness that is provided by chaos, we must understand the behavior of the elements subjected to it. Elements, as we know, come in various flavors, each with different behaviors and tendencies to combine. Some, like helium, are not very reactive, but others, like carbon, are complex and eager to create many different compounds. Not only that, every compound has its own shape. We understand this through the formations of crystals. This is all to say that elements themselves are self-organizing.
Now that we have self-organizing elements in a chaotic system, let's add another ingredient: time. 4.6 billion years, to be exact (or, 14 billion years if you want to take it one step further). To most, this much time is almost impossible to comprehend, so let me put it this way: in this much time, if something is remotely possible, it is almost sure to happen at least once. This goes for abiogenesis (the emergence of life from non-life), with the right conditions. Then, once we have life, we start the evolution engine! Now we're talking about self-organizing elements lively participating in a self-organizing system of natural selection.
Here's where "irreducible complexity" likes to sink its slimy fingers in. From our perspective, as intelligent humans with culture and ego, and from the present looking into the past, we see a string of events that all chained together to create our "perfect" bodies and the amazingly coincidentally harmonious dance of nature. The problem with this perspective is that it completely neglects all of the paths that evolution went down, only to reach a dead end. There have been quite a lot. Like history told through the eyes of a 11pm news cast, we see just the facts that are important to the story. We see our past as a narrative; one thing leading to another, which leads to another, until we arrive at the present. It is easy to be deceived by this view because it plays right into our self-centered tendencies.
The universe doesn't work like that, though. At any given time, there is an innumerable amount of activity and we only see the result of a very small fraction of it. This is where probability comes into play. With enough time, we are given a nigh infinite number of chances to become what we are now. Evolution through natural selection is nothing but a massive trial and error scheme that trends toward improvement. What works survives and reproduces and what doesn't work dies off. We would surely have a greater appreciation for the process if we could see it happening before our eyes, but, once again, the severe amount of time we are up against clouds our vision.
Taking all of this into consideration makes it very plausible to consider our current existence as both a lucky one and an inevitable one. However, to ignore the very systems that combine to create our wonderfully complex bodies and claim that we must have been designed is a cop-out. Even if you argue that a creator set all of this in motion, you still have to contend with all of the failed trials that gave way to the successful ones that eventually begot you. If you see it the way I do, you'll realize there is no design, only a framework. Within it: ataxia. Any complexity and order you see within that framework is a result of the intricacy of its building blocks and the sheer amount of time they have had to develop.
To understand how our biological systems came to be so complex, you must understand the concept of a self-organizing system like evolution. The coupling of the chaos theory and natural selection perfectly explains it, but first, you must change your perspective to a very impersonal, time's eye view. The chaos theory states that in a given dynamical system (on the micro level, this would be the interaction of elements), while individual reactions are predictable, chains of reactions become exponentially more random. For instance, I was playing pool last night and I could accurately predict the angle of any ball bouncing off my cue-ball. I could not, however, guess what would happen to any particular ball on a break. With so many reactions happening that depend upon each other, the fate of any particular ball is completely up in the air.
Now that we understand the randomness that is provided by chaos, we must understand the behavior of the elements subjected to it. Elements, as we know, come in various flavors, each with different behaviors and tendencies to combine. Some, like helium, are not very reactive, but others, like carbon, are complex and eager to create many different compounds. Not only that, every compound has its own shape. We understand this through the formations of crystals. This is all to say that elements themselves are self-organizing.
Now that we have self-organizing elements in a chaotic system, let's add another ingredient: time. 4.6 billion years, to be exact (or, 14 billion years if you want to take it one step further). To most, this much time is almost impossible to comprehend, so let me put it this way: in this much time, if something is remotely possible, it is almost sure to happen at least once. This goes for abiogenesis (the emergence of life from non-life), with the right conditions. Then, once we have life, we start the evolution engine! Now we're talking about self-organizing elements lively participating in a self-organizing system of natural selection.
Here's where "irreducible complexity" likes to sink its slimy fingers in. From our perspective, as intelligent humans with culture and ego, and from the present looking into the past, we see a string of events that all chained together to create our "perfect" bodies and the amazingly coincidentally harmonious dance of nature. The problem with this perspective is that it completely neglects all of the paths that evolution went down, only to reach a dead end. There have been quite a lot. Like history told through the eyes of a 11pm news cast, we see just the facts that are important to the story. We see our past as a narrative; one thing leading to another, which leads to another, until we arrive at the present. It is easy to be deceived by this view because it plays right into our self-centered tendencies.
The universe doesn't work like that, though. At any given time, there is an innumerable amount of activity and we only see the result of a very small fraction of it. This is where probability comes into play. With enough time, we are given a nigh infinite number of chances to become what we are now. Evolution through natural selection is nothing but a massive trial and error scheme that trends toward improvement. What works survives and reproduces and what doesn't work dies off. We would surely have a greater appreciation for the process if we could see it happening before our eyes, but, once again, the severe amount of time we are up against clouds our vision.
Taking all of this into consideration makes it very plausible to consider our current existence as both a lucky one and an inevitable one. However, to ignore the very systems that combine to create our wonderfully complex bodies and claim that we must have been designed is a cop-out. Even if you argue that a creator set all of this in motion, you still have to contend with all of the failed trials that gave way to the successful ones that eventually begot you. If you see it the way I do, you'll realize there is no design, only a framework. Within it: ataxia. Any complexity and order you see within that framework is a result of the intricacy of its building blocks and the sheer amount of time they have had to develop.
I have a rather weird side hobby; when I walk around New York City, I keep my eyes trained just above head level and I scan both sides of the street. I look for signs of a particular nature: fallout shelter signs. As you no doubt have noticed, the image in the header of this blog is of a fallout shelter sign. I even have a large mounted against the exposed brick wall in my apartment. Why the fascination? To understand my hobby, you should know that the signs were all created and mounted in the early 1960's, so they represent a very paranoid time in our history. They are anachronisms.
So far, I have collected pictures of 88 different signs. That number is sure to go up this summer when the weather is warm enough to walk more than a couple blocks for no good reason. Here is a gallery of the pictures I have taken. They are all done with my iPhone. I do take higher quality pictures with a digital camera (as you can see above), but I am saving those for more impressive applications.
My goal this year is to reach 200 and to actually visit the inside of a former fallout shelter. (Bonus assignment: parse the EXIF data from each of these photos and plot them all out on a map.)
So far, I have collected pictures of 88 different signs. That number is sure to go up this summer when the weather is warm enough to walk more than a couple blocks for no good reason. Here is a gallery of the pictures I have taken. They are all done with my iPhone. I do take higher quality pictures with a digital camera (as you can see above), but I am saving those for more impressive applications.
My goal this year is to reach 200 and to actually visit the inside of a former fallout shelter. (Bonus assignment: parse the EXIF data from each of these photos and plot them all out on a map.)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)