Am I my own? If I belong to myself, what part of me is the owner, and what part the property? Can property own itself? It seems that such words start to lose their meaning once you hit this level of abstraction.
I think there are those who would have me believe that I am "my own person." My life, body, consciousness, abilities... these all belong to me. But when my makeup and circumstances define what I want to do with this "property" of mine, these things are my rulers, not my slaves. It all seems contrived, but then, so is the general concept of ownership.
More interesting still are the folks who would have me believe that I am not my own person, but that my whole being is on loan from god. I guess it's not inconceivable that I'm god's little pet.
My question is, does god own himself? Or is it equally blurry for him as it is for us? If god can't change his nature because of his nature, then he's as much a slave as any of us.
God's ownership of us is at least in keeping with the general idea of property rights. God has supposedly claimed us as "his," and has the power to whack anyone who tries to ignore his claim. We are his to destroy or give away or bake into a hot-dish. If you owned a sack of flour, the same would be true about you. Ultimately, some people respect your property in order not to get whacked by someone (some are respectful out of moral principle, but we know for sure that this is not true of all). You can do what you like with it.
However, I don't see why I have any reason to respect god's ownership of me. Okay, he could pound me to bits like any defective toy and toss me out with Monday's trash, so if I want to avoid that I should behave. But when a piece of property malfunctions, we usually find it quite juvenile to get all mad and blame the object in question. There are a couple of terms that I like that refer to the cause of computer error: GIGO (Garbage in, Garbage out), and PEBCAK (Problem exists between chair and keyboard). How about human error? God made us, so it's all his fault, right? Design flaws?
If, however, we have free will or some germ of existence that is independent of god (as is stated in LDS theology), what we do is no longer god's fault. However, in this case I would call into question the justice of god's claim of ownership. Sure, god can still cause us pain and suffering and maybe even nonexistence of some sort, but "might makes right" is not a just moral precept, only an effective one. If I was an intelligence before I was a spirit, what right did god have to pick me up, stick me into a spirit somehow, and then claim ownership over me as my "creator?" As I understand it, he, too, is nothing more than a little chunk of intelligence that got stuck into a spirit and then a body, and then eventually got pretty powerful.
Come to think of it, this is starting to sound like abusive behavior toward children propagating down through multiple generations. Perhaps god is as much a victim as we are, and is dealing with us the way he learned, the way he was dealt with.
I don't really think there's a god, but I sure like to try to figure out what the existence of a god would mean for ethics and reality, not to mention our bizarre relationship with him.
Showing posts with label Philosophy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Philosophy. Show all posts
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Making Molehills out of Mountains
I recently had a long conversation with a good friend who is tbm. I talked about my qualms with the LDS faith and with faith in general. His advice to me was to stop sweating the small stuff and have faith in the simplest way, the way a child believes.
More recently, I talked with my mother about a similar subject. She mentioned that she thought that I find fault in things that LDS leaders have said and with specific points of doctrine.
I understand where both of these people are coming from. Not seeing the forest for the trees, I could miss a lot of good things in life if I were to reject anything and everything that did not seem perfect to me.
However, I am not convinced that it is wrong to heavily consider details in this situation. The is absolute truth we're talking about, it's a big deal if one religion happens to be true (making the others all false to various degrees).
So I guess I probably shouldn't attack the church because Brigham Young was misogynistic and racist in his personal opinions... nobody's perfect, but they can still be right about some things even if wrong about others. However, when church doctrine seems unlikely or patently false, I think that this is relevant. And when the so-called prophet speaks to the church, he is supposed to be standing in for god. So I could care less what Ol' Brother Brigham said to friends, family, and acquaintances. However, when he spoke in general conference or wrote things down for the church, that is the stuff that is supposed to be guaranteed. What's the point of a prophet when he could always be "speaking as a man?" (And he always turns out to have been when he said something wrong.)
I countered that the prophet is pointless if you are never sure of the validity of what he's saying. The reply that I got asserted that one does not need to believe the prophet necessarily, that one can receive one's own confirmation of what the prophet has said. I think this is a refreshingly liberal thought from members of a faith that is sometimes frighteningly dogmatic and protective of its leaders.
However, I think that this argument puts the final nail in the coffin of the "necessity of prophets." If we are not to believe anything they say until we go ask ourselves, why not just ask god ourselves in the first place? I mean, the whole "stewardship" thing, where you need a certain calling or priesthood to be able to reveal things for a certain group, is useless if nothing they say is to be trusted anyway.
So if I'm a little upset about what they didn't tell me about the Book of Abraham, is that me throwing the baby out with the bathwater? (frankly, as an atheist, I would never waste a perfectly tasty baby in such a way) I don't think so! The book is fraudulent. The "translation" is fiction. The facsimiles are inaccurately reconstructed and the symbols on them wildly misinterpreted.
And then people try to tell me "Joseph Smith was just a man!" Well, I never doubted the fact, but what happened to "the prophet will never lead the church astray?" The fact that millions of Mormons believe that the Book of Abraham is a direct translation of some papyrus that Smith got from mummies being sold (the tiny little archaeologist inside me cringes) on the American frontier seems to fall within the realm of "astray."
There is a great analog of this from the world of physics. The Michelson-Morley experiment performed in the 19th century failed to confirm what it was designed to confirm: that since the Earth is moving through the fixed "ether" of space, there should be an "ether wind" that makes light travel faster in some directions than others (because the ether is what the waves propagate through). The physics community was puzzled, and kept building bigger and better experiments to try to figure out how they'd missed the ether wind. Then, a bored patent-office clerk named Albert Einstein decided to take this seemingly-small discrepancy out to its weird logical conclusion: that light propagates at the same speed in all directions as observed from any reference frame. Thus the theory of relativity was born, a theory which has repeatedly been confirmed by various experiments, has fundamentally changed our view of the structure and behavior of the universe, and without which GPS navigation devices would be accurate to within tens of miles instead of tens of feet.
Did Einstein err by making a mountain out of what so many regarded as a molehill? If by "err" you mean "make the most important discovery made by the physical sciences in centuries," then yes.
Near the end of the 19th century, Rutherford (the physicist responsible for hiring the grad students who discovered the atomic nucleus) noted that the Physics community had solved nearly every problem about how the world works. He described two little dinky things, two discrepancies that were about all that remained: The Michelson-Morley experiment and the behavior of black-body radiation.
Rutherford is frequently mocked for his assertion that physics was almost "done," but I think he was quite astute. As I've already mentioned, the M-M experiment's results led to the development of the theory of relativity. Black-body radiation is one of the very first things that made certain physicist start noticing that quantities which were assumed to be continuous only came in certain discreet values, an idea that led to the development of quantum mechanics. Thus, 19th-century physical science was completely swept aside by radical, powerful new theories that arose from curious investigation from the last, dinky little discrepancies that seemed to exist in the models of the day. These are not just abstract physics, either. Relativity and quantum mechanics are essential to things from NASA's calculations of spaceship trajectories to the operation of the tiny electronic circuits printed on silicon microchips.
I think that the "put it on the shelf" attitude is misled. Just ignore anything I have qualms about, because ultimately the gospel is something much bigger? Just because lots of parts of it are consistent with each other (which I readily admit... I would have become atheist quicker if I had been of a denomination other than LDS,
I suspect) does not mean that the entire structure is not misled, as was the case of 19th-century science.
Disregarding things like the Book of Abraham and the inconsistency of church doctrine through the years is not a path to truth. It is making molehills out of mountains, keeping the bathwater sitting in the bath forever (yuck) just in case the baby's in there, and missing the ravenous tigers for the forest.
More recently, I talked with my mother about a similar subject. She mentioned that she thought that I find fault in things that LDS leaders have said and with specific points of doctrine.
I understand where both of these people are coming from. Not seeing the forest for the trees, I could miss a lot of good things in life if I were to reject anything and everything that did not seem perfect to me.
However, I am not convinced that it is wrong to heavily consider details in this situation. The is absolute truth we're talking about, it's a big deal if one religion happens to be true (making the others all false to various degrees).
So I guess I probably shouldn't attack the church because Brigham Young was misogynistic and racist in his personal opinions... nobody's perfect, but they can still be right about some things even if wrong about others. However, when church doctrine seems unlikely or patently false, I think that this is relevant. And when the so-called prophet speaks to the church, he is supposed to be standing in for god. So I could care less what Ol' Brother Brigham said to friends, family, and acquaintances. However, when he spoke in general conference or wrote things down for the church, that is the stuff that is supposed to be guaranteed. What's the point of a prophet when he could always be "speaking as a man?" (And he always turns out to have been when he said something wrong.)
I countered that the prophet is pointless if you are never sure of the validity of what he's saying. The reply that I got asserted that one does not need to believe the prophet necessarily, that one can receive one's own confirmation of what the prophet has said. I think this is a refreshingly liberal thought from members of a faith that is sometimes frighteningly dogmatic and protective of its leaders.
However, I think that this argument puts the final nail in the coffin of the "necessity of prophets." If we are not to believe anything they say until we go ask ourselves, why not just ask god ourselves in the first place? I mean, the whole "stewardship" thing, where you need a certain calling or priesthood to be able to reveal things for a certain group, is useless if nothing they say is to be trusted anyway.
So if I'm a little upset about what they didn't tell me about the Book of Abraham, is that me throwing the baby out with the bathwater? (frankly, as an atheist, I would never waste a perfectly tasty baby in such a way) I don't think so! The book is fraudulent. The "translation" is fiction. The facsimiles are inaccurately reconstructed and the symbols on them wildly misinterpreted.
And then people try to tell me "Joseph Smith was just a man!" Well, I never doubted the fact, but what happened to "the prophet will never lead the church astray?" The fact that millions of Mormons believe that the Book of Abraham is a direct translation of some papyrus that Smith got from mummies being sold (the tiny little archaeologist inside me cringes) on the American frontier seems to fall within the realm of "astray."
There is a great analog of this from the world of physics. The Michelson-Morley experiment performed in the 19th century failed to confirm what it was designed to confirm: that since the Earth is moving through the fixed "ether" of space, there should be an "ether wind" that makes light travel faster in some directions than others (because the ether is what the waves propagate through). The physics community was puzzled, and kept building bigger and better experiments to try to figure out how they'd missed the ether wind. Then, a bored patent-office clerk named Albert Einstein decided to take this seemingly-small discrepancy out to its weird logical conclusion: that light propagates at the same speed in all directions as observed from any reference frame. Thus the theory of relativity was born, a theory which has repeatedly been confirmed by various experiments, has fundamentally changed our view of the structure and behavior of the universe, and without which GPS navigation devices would be accurate to within tens of miles instead of tens of feet.
Did Einstein err by making a mountain out of what so many regarded as a molehill? If by "err" you mean "make the most important discovery made by the physical sciences in centuries," then yes.
Near the end of the 19th century, Rutherford (the physicist responsible for hiring the grad students who discovered the atomic nucleus) noted that the Physics community had solved nearly every problem about how the world works. He described two little dinky things, two discrepancies that were about all that remained: The Michelson-Morley experiment and the behavior of black-body radiation.
Rutherford is frequently mocked for his assertion that physics was almost "done," but I think he was quite astute. As I've already mentioned, the M-M experiment's results led to the development of the theory of relativity. Black-body radiation is one of the very first things that made certain physicist start noticing that quantities which were assumed to be continuous only came in certain discreet values, an idea that led to the development of quantum mechanics. Thus, 19th-century physical science was completely swept aside by radical, powerful new theories that arose from curious investigation from the last, dinky little discrepancies that seemed to exist in the models of the day. These are not just abstract physics, either. Relativity and quantum mechanics are essential to things from NASA's calculations of spaceship trajectories to the operation of the tiny electronic circuits printed on silicon microchips.
I think that the "put it on the shelf" attitude is misled. Just ignore anything I have qualms about, because ultimately the gospel is something much bigger? Just because lots of parts of it are consistent with each other (which I readily admit... I would have become atheist quicker if I had been of a denomination other than LDS,
I suspect) does not mean that the entire structure is not misled, as was the case of 19th-century science.
Disregarding things like the Book of Abraham and the inconsistency of church doctrine through the years is not a path to truth. It is making molehills out of mountains, keeping the bathwater sitting in the bath forever (yuck) just in case the baby's in there, and missing the ravenous tigers for the forest.
Monday, April 4, 2011
Economics and Human Morality
Once again, I depart from my usual themes of atheism, religion, and how silly everyone is to ramble on about other things I've been thinking about.
I have been reading a lot of Vonnegut lately (as everyone should), and it has helped me fill out some thoughts that I was already tossing around:
Endless debate concerns the ideal system of economics. Alarmed cries of "socialism!" rise from the conservative crowds, many of whom have no idea what they're talking about. However, a few of them actually do know a thing or two about economics, and their advocacy of a purely market-driven economy is reasonably defensible.
Pure capitalism is superior to socialism in terms of its respect for property rights. Property rights include the assumed right that my future self has to control anything my present self has and does not willingly give up. In addition, they include the assumption that it is my right to decide what happens to "my" things when I kick the bucket.
What are the ethical origins of property rights? They seem to be inherent to human beings, and they seem to be a good idea from an evolutionary standpoint. The cleverest/sliest human beings accumulate the most property. To propagate one's genes, one would be well-advised to accumulate wealth, reproduce, and then make sure that one's offspring receive that wealth so they, too, can successfully live and reproduce.
However, property rights don't have much else going for them in the ethics department. It is horrifically unfair that some children should be born into great privilege while so many more are born to circumstances so poor that their chance of survival to adulthood is significantly reduced. It may well even be unfair that someone who works hard early in life can become rich and slough later in life, and someone who sloughs early in life must work hard later in life just to survive.
However, because of how human beings are built, we don't really function without property rights. The socialist experiments of the 20th century were not very successful for various reasons, and one of these reasons is the innate desire to claim what one is holding as one's own. In fact, the human race is so attached to property rights that we are more than willing to suspend our other moral intuitions, like that we shouldn't kill people, in order to retain or accumulate more property.
Socialism, on the other hand, is quite disrespectful of property rights... it is built around the idea that wealth should be distributed, or jointly-owned, or some other such scheme that means that I do not necessarily keep the economic value that I manage to create. It seems unfair in relation to property rights. However, socialism is built around ideals serving other moral intuitions, like the consideration of the implicit costs to society incurred by society's allowing certain members to go without many very basic needs. Very few of us could honestly say that we feel that the situation of malnourished children born into filth and poverty is just, and may even feel a little guilty as we cram down doughnuts in front of our wide-screen TVs.
Can these two desires, the altruistic desire that everyone have enough and the desire for "just" property rights where value created is kept by the creator, ever coexist?
Probably, they can never perfectly be reconciled. We can do what we've always done, which is argue about it and sort of shoot down the middle somewhere, and somewhat satisfy both. Or we could try to argue that if the haves were more philanthropic, the have-nots would become have-enoughs, and both principles would be served. However, this does not seem to be the case; many people have unnecessary luxuries like pools or exotic pets or sports cars when people all around them can barely afford shelter, much less education, insurance, or decent medical care. Philanthropic giving hasn't ever covered the wide disparity between the wealthy and the desperately-poor.
So I am forced to conclude that, in our present situation, there is not ideal system of economics. Human beings hold to both of the mutually-exclusive desires for property rights and the humane treatment of fellow humans. We are contradictory beings who want to have our cake and eat it, too.
Lest I end on a terribly-depressing note, however, I will concede that certain circumstances could remedy this dilemma. A post-scarcity economy, where essentially anyone can have anything they need and much of what they want for very little effort, might remove the problem. Basically if we find a way to make replicators from Star Trek and also unlimited energy. Space is still a problem, of course, but the situation is much improved, and if birth control is also widely available, that problem might diminish.
I have been reading a lot of Vonnegut lately (as everyone should), and it has helped me fill out some thoughts that I was already tossing around:
Endless debate concerns the ideal system of economics. Alarmed cries of "socialism!" rise from the conservative crowds, many of whom have no idea what they're talking about. However, a few of them actually do know a thing or two about economics, and their advocacy of a purely market-driven economy is reasonably defensible.
Pure capitalism is superior to socialism in terms of its respect for property rights. Property rights include the assumed right that my future self has to control anything my present self has and does not willingly give up. In addition, they include the assumption that it is my right to decide what happens to "my" things when I kick the bucket.
What are the ethical origins of property rights? They seem to be inherent to human beings, and they seem to be a good idea from an evolutionary standpoint. The cleverest/sliest human beings accumulate the most property. To propagate one's genes, one would be well-advised to accumulate wealth, reproduce, and then make sure that one's offspring receive that wealth so they, too, can successfully live and reproduce.
However, property rights don't have much else going for them in the ethics department. It is horrifically unfair that some children should be born into great privilege while so many more are born to circumstances so poor that their chance of survival to adulthood is significantly reduced. It may well even be unfair that someone who works hard early in life can become rich and slough later in life, and someone who sloughs early in life must work hard later in life just to survive.
However, because of how human beings are built, we don't really function without property rights. The socialist experiments of the 20th century were not very successful for various reasons, and one of these reasons is the innate desire to claim what one is holding as one's own. In fact, the human race is so attached to property rights that we are more than willing to suspend our other moral intuitions, like that we shouldn't kill people, in order to retain or accumulate more property.
Socialism, on the other hand, is quite disrespectful of property rights... it is built around the idea that wealth should be distributed, or jointly-owned, or some other such scheme that means that I do not necessarily keep the economic value that I manage to create. It seems unfair in relation to property rights. However, socialism is built around ideals serving other moral intuitions, like the consideration of the implicit costs to society incurred by society's allowing certain members to go without many very basic needs. Very few of us could honestly say that we feel that the situation of malnourished children born into filth and poverty is just, and may even feel a little guilty as we cram down doughnuts in front of our wide-screen TVs.
Can these two desires, the altruistic desire that everyone have enough and the desire for "just" property rights where value created is kept by the creator, ever coexist?
Probably, they can never perfectly be reconciled. We can do what we've always done, which is argue about it and sort of shoot down the middle somewhere, and somewhat satisfy both. Or we could try to argue that if the haves were more philanthropic, the have-nots would become have-enoughs, and both principles would be served. However, this does not seem to be the case; many people have unnecessary luxuries like pools or exotic pets or sports cars when people all around them can barely afford shelter, much less education, insurance, or decent medical care. Philanthropic giving hasn't ever covered the wide disparity between the wealthy and the desperately-poor.
So I am forced to conclude that, in our present situation, there is not ideal system of economics. Human beings hold to both of the mutually-exclusive desires for property rights and the humane treatment of fellow humans. We are contradictory beings who want to have our cake and eat it, too.
Lest I end on a terribly-depressing note, however, I will concede that certain circumstances could remedy this dilemma. A post-scarcity economy, where essentially anyone can have anything they need and much of what they want for very little effort, might remove the problem. Basically if we find a way to make replicators from Star Trek and also unlimited energy. Space is still a problem, of course, but the situation is much improved, and if birth control is also widely available, that problem might diminish.
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
The Nature of God
Who is this "god" fella? Why are so many people so concerned with him... or her... or it?
I don't care which euphemism you use. Supreme being. Creator. First cause. Prime mover. Higher power. Greater intelligence. Spirit of nature, life force, big cheese in the sky, invisible pink unicorn... None of these actually describe much about the thing they refer to, so I think most of them can be used interchangeably, and are by religious persons.
I guess, if we aggregate the qualities of all of these names for god (at least the serious ones), we find we are talking about something that is smarter and more powerful than human beings, existed before anything else (and is responsible for the existence of everything else), and is not subject to the laws of nature as we understand them.
This leaves a lot of fudge room. Consider the following gods:
Jehova -- God of the Bible, with an affinity for certain Semitic peoples. His main purpose seems to be to make sure all of his creations do what he tells them to do. Is extremely nervous about sex, can be contacted via some sort of telepathy. Sent/is Jesus, who had to die horribly so that he could forgive us of all of the bad things that we do because of how he made us. Generally human...ish.
Mork the Incinerator -- God I just made up, lives on the moon. Did not always live on the moon, because she had to create it first. Her main purpose is to get her creations to do her work for her. The human race was created so that we could perfect maple syrup. Visited earth in the form of Agatha Christie for unknown reasons. Can be contacted via invisible laser phone to the moon, which is built into the cells of all living creatures.
Both of these fit the basic criteria, as far as I can tell. As a side comment, I'd like to say that I prefer Mork.
So when someone asks me if I believe in god, what am I supposed to say? I mean, I say no, but then sometimes people will go off on this whole thing about where did the universe come from and science can't explain the beginning of all things! Sure. I agree. Then they say "So you believe in god!"
Okay... so I guess before I answer their question, I should ask them to clarify what they mean by "god." For all I know, god is a toaster in a bed-and-breakfast in South Dakota. And sure, if by "god" you mean "the abstract concept that human science is inherently deficient and can't account of the existence of something rather than nothing," sure, I believe in god! But that does not mean that I believe in a bearded busybody who gets really upset when people eat pigs or talk smack about him.
I won't even grant that it must be intelligent!
But Dave! The universe must be designed, because if certain physical constants were only slightly different, matter could not exist as atoms!
Yeah, big whoop. I bet there are quark-gluon plasma people out in some universe saying the same thing, except they believe in their strange charm god because they are so lucky that things aren't just different enough for quarks to combine into hadrons. (Among which are protons and neutrons, essential for our existence.)
Okay, I know I'm getting a little snarky. But frankly, if the universe were incapable of supporting life, who would notice?
And regardless, why be grateful that you exist? It's not like you'd care if you didn't.
The thing is, individual religions each have a reasonably well-defined description of god, but there are a lot of religions, and they all differ in their views.
If there is an intelligent god, is he really messing around with us? Homo sapiens has existed for less than a million years, out of the 13.75 or so billion years the universe has probably existed. That's less than 0.007%.
Assuming that humanity regularly travels anywhere from any point on the earth's surface to the orbit of geosynchronous satellites (which are quite far out), there are approximately 18 billion cubic kilometers of area that has anything to do with us. The observable universe is about 134 followed by 117 zeroes cubic kilometers in volume. The part that mankind get around in is is about the same percentage as the percent chance of you getting struck by lightning... twenty time... in one given year.
How much could we possibly matter? We have existed as a species for 0.007% of the universe's existence, and even then we've (at maximum!) only occupied such a small percentage that I gave it to you in lightning strikes. It's somewhere around 4*10^-107, if you want the numbers.
If we are the apex of creation, god sure took his sweet time getting around to making us! I think the creationists aren't scared of what science will do to god's image... I think they are afraid of just how insignificant we are as a species.
I don't care which euphemism you use. Supreme being. Creator. First cause. Prime mover. Higher power. Greater intelligence. Spirit of nature, life force, big cheese in the sky, invisible pink unicorn... None of these actually describe much about the thing they refer to, so I think most of them can be used interchangeably, and are by religious persons.
I guess, if we aggregate the qualities of all of these names for god (at least the serious ones), we find we are talking about something that is smarter and more powerful than human beings, existed before anything else (and is responsible for the existence of everything else), and is not subject to the laws of nature as we understand them.
This leaves a lot of fudge room. Consider the following gods:
Jehova -- God of the Bible, with an affinity for certain Semitic peoples. His main purpose seems to be to make sure all of his creations do what he tells them to do. Is extremely nervous about sex, can be contacted via some sort of telepathy. Sent/is Jesus, who had to die horribly so that he could forgive us of all of the bad things that we do because of how he made us. Generally human...ish.
Mork the Incinerator -- God I just made up, lives on the moon. Did not always live on the moon, because she had to create it first. Her main purpose is to get her creations to do her work for her. The human race was created so that we could perfect maple syrup. Visited earth in the form of Agatha Christie for unknown reasons. Can be contacted via invisible laser phone to the moon, which is built into the cells of all living creatures.
Both of these fit the basic criteria, as far as I can tell. As a side comment, I'd like to say that I prefer Mork.
So when someone asks me if I believe in god, what am I supposed to say? I mean, I say no, but then sometimes people will go off on this whole thing about where did the universe come from and science can't explain the beginning of all things! Sure. I agree. Then they say "So you believe in god!"
Okay... so I guess before I answer their question, I should ask them to clarify what they mean by "god." For all I know, god is a toaster in a bed-and-breakfast in South Dakota. And sure, if by "god" you mean "the abstract concept that human science is inherently deficient and can't account of the existence of something rather than nothing," sure, I believe in god! But that does not mean that I believe in a bearded busybody who gets really upset when people eat pigs or talk smack about him.
I won't even grant that it must be intelligent!
But Dave! The universe must be designed, because if certain physical constants were only slightly different, matter could not exist as atoms!
Yeah, big whoop. I bet there are quark-gluon plasma people out in some universe saying the same thing, except they believe in their strange charm god because they are so lucky that things aren't just different enough for quarks to combine into hadrons. (Among which are protons and neutrons, essential for our existence.)
Okay, I know I'm getting a little snarky. But frankly, if the universe were incapable of supporting life, who would notice?
And regardless, why be grateful that you exist? It's not like you'd care if you didn't.
The thing is, individual religions each have a reasonably well-defined description of god, but there are a lot of religions, and they all differ in their views.
If there is an intelligent god, is he really messing around with us? Homo sapiens has existed for less than a million years, out of the 13.75 or so billion years the universe has probably existed. That's less than 0.007%.
Assuming that humanity regularly travels anywhere from any point on the earth's surface to the orbit of geosynchronous satellites (which are quite far out), there are approximately 18 billion cubic kilometers of area that has anything to do with us. The observable universe is about 134 followed by 117 zeroes cubic kilometers in volume. The part that mankind get around in is is about the same percentage as the percent chance of you getting struck by lightning... twenty time... in one given year.
How much could we possibly matter? We have existed as a species for 0.007% of the universe's existence, and even then we've (at maximum!) only occupied such a small percentage that I gave it to you in lightning strikes. It's somewhere around 4*10^-107, if you want the numbers.
If we are the apex of creation, god sure took his sweet time getting around to making us! I think the creationists aren't scared of what science will do to god's image... I think they are afraid of just how insignificant we are as a species.
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Absolute Morality 'n' Me
Certain things seem to be largely considered universally wrong. Other things have a lesser wrongness, a subjective wrongness, it seems.
Absolute Moral: Killing children is bad. We regard anyone who does it deliberately as sick and unfit for our society. It is appalling on a pretty deep level.
Subjective Moral: Living together before marriage. All of the arguments about this one involve assumptions that are not expected to be universally accepted, usually an appeal to some theology. This seems to be an intellectual sort of moral judgment rather than an intuitive one.
Absolute Moral: It is good to be kind to people. We feel that this is right by virtue of the pleasure we derive not only by having it done for us, but also by doing it for others.
Subjective Moral: It is good to read the Bible every day. Once again, an intellectual sort of judgment dependent upon one's personal opinions and worldview.
This distinction is known to most people. I mean... as a child, a Mormon may condemn anyone who drinks coffee or alcohol. Adults will find this amusing, because they know better: this little piece of morality is subject to assumptions that people do not have to make in order to still be considered moral. Even if those people are wrong wrong wrong, they are simply misled, not bad.
If you happen to belong to a cult that regards random murder as awesome, very few people are probably going to give you the same benefit of the doubt.
This whole idea occurred to me recently while I read part of a talk by Boyd Packer. He was talking about the sanctity of marriage. Nothing he said was what would be considered an appeal to absolute morality... it was all subjective, all dependent on Mormon theology. No one who didn't belong to the minority he belongs to could be persuaded in the least by his arguments.
I don't know that there is something innate or biological about this "absolute" morality.. I'm sure it's subject to culture as well. However, even if these rules are not technically "absolute," it seems that they are absolute as far as anyone from the society we inhabit is concerned. They certainly seem absolute relative to the "subjective" rules accepted only by this minority or that.
And so we get the following:
Atheist: Homosexuality = Okay, Killing = Not Okay
Mormon: Homosexuality = Not Okay, Killing = Not Okay
Can you think of a group that finds homosexuality okay and killing okay? If there is such a group, they will not be accepted as even roughly moral people by society. They will be locked away or killed.
"Absolute" morals ought to be reflected in law. "Subjective" morals probably shouldn't be in most cases.
Not to say that the prevailing morality is necessarily right, but it certainly is widely-held, and what else do we have?
Absolute Moral: Killing children is bad. We regard anyone who does it deliberately as sick and unfit for our society. It is appalling on a pretty deep level.
Subjective Moral: Living together before marriage. All of the arguments about this one involve assumptions that are not expected to be universally accepted, usually an appeal to some theology. This seems to be an intellectual sort of moral judgment rather than an intuitive one.
Absolute Moral: It is good to be kind to people. We feel that this is right by virtue of the pleasure we derive not only by having it done for us, but also by doing it for others.
Subjective Moral: It is good to read the Bible every day. Once again, an intellectual sort of judgment dependent upon one's personal opinions and worldview.
This distinction is known to most people. I mean... as a child, a Mormon may condemn anyone who drinks coffee or alcohol. Adults will find this amusing, because they know better: this little piece of morality is subject to assumptions that people do not have to make in order to still be considered moral. Even if those people are wrong wrong wrong, they are simply misled, not bad.
If you happen to belong to a cult that regards random murder as awesome, very few people are probably going to give you the same benefit of the doubt.
This whole idea occurred to me recently while I read part of a talk by Boyd Packer. He was talking about the sanctity of marriage. Nothing he said was what would be considered an appeal to absolute morality... it was all subjective, all dependent on Mormon theology. No one who didn't belong to the minority he belongs to could be persuaded in the least by his arguments.
I don't know that there is something innate or biological about this "absolute" morality.. I'm sure it's subject to culture as well. However, even if these rules are not technically "absolute," it seems that they are absolute as far as anyone from the society we inhabit is concerned. They certainly seem absolute relative to the "subjective" rules accepted only by this minority or that.
And so we get the following:
Atheist: Homosexuality = Okay, Killing = Not Okay
Mormon: Homosexuality = Not Okay, Killing = Not Okay
Can you think of a group that finds homosexuality okay and killing okay? If there is such a group, they will not be accepted as even roughly moral people by society. They will be locked away or killed.
"Absolute" morals ought to be reflected in law. "Subjective" morals probably shouldn't be in most cases.
Not to say that the prevailing morality is necessarily right, but it certainly is widely-held, and what else do we have?
Monday, February 21, 2011
Demoniac Madness
Life is absurd, is it not? If there is purpose to existence, we can't ever really know it, can we? Since rational value judgments are ultimately impossible, there would be no way to persuade an individual that such a value judgment is correct.
Kierkegaard wrote about the absurd, all the while defending religious faith. He called acceptance of the absurd "demoniac madness," and said that a person who refuses to accept unfounded beliefs "rages most of all at the thought that eternity might get it into its head to take his misery from him!"
Kierkegaard defends the "leap of faith," the acceptance of something that is not necessarily true. He admits that there can be no rational purpose to life; even if life's purpose is determined by god, what is the purpose of god? So the absurdity of human existence is not in anyway assuaged by the concept of god, because god's existence is equally absurd, if not more so.
I, as a human being, am doomed to die. Likely, this will be the end of my awareness, something to which I feel a strangely powerful attachment. So, I experience fear, though I know nothing of what it will be like to die, and can hardly expect that existence following death will be in any way unpleasant... or in any way anything!
Yet, as a "sane" person, I go about my daily life, working, resting, talking, engaging in a repetitive life that seems as if it's always been, and will always be.
This is absurd. Would I really be doing the dishes if the shear, animal terror of death were truly in my mind? Looming at the end of my short life, with the seconds flying by and completely out of my control, lies my end. My decease. The black pit that I hurtle toward every moment.
All that I do to "improve" myself will be gone in that instant. All that I am will be forgotten not long after. This flourishing planet, covered in life, is just in a transient state, but will eventually reach the steady-state: lifeless, cold, silence.
And we take ourselves so seriously! It's hilarious, really. We think we matter. We think that anything matters!
And when we can't ignore death, we turn to the wild realm of fantasy. Religion, superstition, spiritualism, pantheism... all coping mechanisms evolved by a bunch of primates who have been the victims of runaway brain evolution. We are too smart, and so our nature is to cling to denial.
What separates man from the animal? Not a whole lot, genetically. Tool use, abstraction, language... these can all be found in the animal kingdom. But no other species does much of what we do... why?
Maybe it's because no other species has stumbled upon the ability to clearly and systematically describe their own existence. Human beings are the one species that we know can gaze into the abyss and realize that all we have, all we are, and all we do is for naught.
In response, we become nature's masters of self-distraction. We fight, we pray, we pretend the dead are still around somewhere. We build, we make up words like "destiny," and we try to force a place for ourselves on the uncaring universe.
As someone willing to distract myself by undertaking pursuits that will allow me to further distract myself in the future, I am called "sane" or "well-adjusted."
And when a person talks about the absurdity of life and existence, others dismiss her. They smile knowingly, having perhaps experienced a tiny hint of existential crisis in the past. But they are beyond such things. They have managed to not believe in death.
The ultimate human triumph is denial, for without it, the human race might see themselves clearly.
Friday, February 4, 2011
Superstitious Apes and the Utility of Religion
A number of conversations, as well as a few snatches of back-to-reality moments, have given me some thoughts about religion lately.
I have stated before that I don't believe religion will be gone anytime soon. In fact, I think the majority of the world will always be religious.
From what I know about human beings, religion is built into us. Every culture in the world has religious beliefs that developed with it. We are very superstitious apes.
You can argue for the spread of atheism and agnosticism in modern, educated society, but it's still not that much. The nation in Europe with the highest fraction of its population admitting no belief in god or a higher power is France, at 33%. And only 4 nations of the 32 studied are above 25%. That means that at least 2/3 of the populations even the most godless nations in the most godless continent believe in a higher power beyond the reaches of rigorous human science.
You could argue for China, but studies vary from 20% to 70% of the population being religious. It is hard to measure behavior in places where a specific belief system is forcibly imposed on the people, because those who believe differently are better off not to admit it openly.
And imagine what would happen if something disastrous seriously upset the global economy, throwing the former first-world nations into poverty, famine, disorder, and misery. There is no doubt that at some time this will happen, disasters are too common to expect otherwise. Will people turn away from god? Some perhaps. But the world is full of people who have lost so many of their friends and family, whose lives have gone from opulent to desperate, and most importantly, whose modern society with all its science and technology has failed them. In times like this, people turn to whatever they think or hope or even just wish could help them.
I don't think these facts will change unless the human race makes some biological (not just sociological) shift.
But what if we could abolish religion, right now? Gone, somehow, in a day, or a year, or something.
My wife asked me a potent question about this scenario: Would drug abuse and suicide rates go up or down?
I had to admit that they may well go up. People take a lot of comfort in religion, and not everyone can handle the idea of no higher power, afterlife, etc. Sometimes I don't think I can handle it.
So though I still don't believe in a higher power, I would not advocate the abolition of religion.
I would, of course, limit the political power of religion. I would love to quell the more violent and bigoted aspects of certain religions.
But if the whole world moved steadily toward a new-age feel-good "god loves everybody" kind of religion, would it be so bad? Tolerant religion without political agendas. It can exist, I think. Strong adherents of religions with strict doctrines scorn these religions, but I think I like them.
So, my policy now is that I don't want to actively persuade people not to believe in god, but rather I'd like to point out the arguments against the hell and damnation and strict Victorian morality aspects of religion.
Seems more realistic, in any case.
I have stated before that I don't believe religion will be gone anytime soon. In fact, I think the majority of the world will always be religious.
From what I know about human beings, religion is built into us. Every culture in the world has religious beliefs that developed with it. We are very superstitious apes.
You can argue for the spread of atheism and agnosticism in modern, educated society, but it's still not that much. The nation in Europe with the highest fraction of its population admitting no belief in god or a higher power is France, at 33%. And only 4 nations of the 32 studied are above 25%. That means that at least 2/3 of the populations even the most godless nations in the most godless continent believe in a higher power beyond the reaches of rigorous human science.
You could argue for China, but studies vary from 20% to 70% of the population being religious. It is hard to measure behavior in places where a specific belief system is forcibly imposed on the people, because those who believe differently are better off not to admit it openly.
And imagine what would happen if something disastrous seriously upset the global economy, throwing the former first-world nations into poverty, famine, disorder, and misery. There is no doubt that at some time this will happen, disasters are too common to expect otherwise. Will people turn away from god? Some perhaps. But the world is full of people who have lost so many of their friends and family, whose lives have gone from opulent to desperate, and most importantly, whose modern society with all its science and technology has failed them. In times like this, people turn to whatever they think or hope or even just wish could help them.
I don't think these facts will change unless the human race makes some biological (not just sociological) shift.
But what if we could abolish religion, right now? Gone, somehow, in a day, or a year, or something.
My wife asked me a potent question about this scenario: Would drug abuse and suicide rates go up or down?
I had to admit that they may well go up. People take a lot of comfort in religion, and not everyone can handle the idea of no higher power, afterlife, etc. Sometimes I don't think I can handle it.
So though I still don't believe in a higher power, I would not advocate the abolition of religion.
I would, of course, limit the political power of religion. I would love to quell the more violent and bigoted aspects of certain religions.
But if the whole world moved steadily toward a new-age feel-good "god loves everybody" kind of religion, would it be so bad? Tolerant religion without political agendas. It can exist, I think. Strong adherents of religions with strict doctrines scorn these religions, but I think I like them.
So, my policy now is that I don't want to actively persuade people not to believe in god, but rather I'd like to point out the arguments against the hell and damnation and strict Victorian morality aspects of religion.
Seems more realistic, in any case.
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