Tag Archive for 'God'

“God did it,” and I’m not Impressed

Published on January 22, 2010 in God and Religion. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

No doubt, one can put together and ask quite a lot of questions that can’t be answered with the science that’s now available. Science doesn’t explain everything. Whether science will ever be able to reply to the inquiries that we collectively consider supreme: that’s another wonder entirely. Perhaps love as we appreciate it will be one day completely lined up with fMRI or other brain scan maps; maybe the “origin of life” will be explained in a way that we can consider likely thus satisfactory; maybe the beginning event that we call the ‘Big Bang’ will be defined in terms of a neat and unifying equation or algorithm. Whatever. The point is, candidly again, science as it stands now doesn’t explain everything we can come up with. And in lieu of any actual answer, we often try to obtain some kind of completion by plugging in a supernatural placeholder: “God did it!” You’ve heard or said this in your own life more than a few times. Why is there something instead of nothing? “God did it.” The theory of evolution by natural selection accounts for the diversity of life, but how did life itself get started? “God did it.” And so forth. You know what I’m talking about. What I wonder is, why is the notion of God doing it maintained and distributed with the connotation that it actually explains anything?

Think about this.

You answer questions that science currently cannot with “God did it!” But then in the next breath you go on to describe God Herself as being “beyond human understanding,” or anything akin. Can you really not readily realize this confidence trick? Having installed God in the middle of everything, you arrive at exactly the same place you would’ve without Her help: “I’m not sure,” or, “I don’t know,” or “It’s beyond human understanding.” You’ve simply personified the unknown, and then made friends with it. Nothing has been gained. Further, matter of factly, “God did it” throws away any potential for advancement. In science, “I don’t know” is the only answer actually available in quite a lot of domains. Still, this sort of uncertainty maintains room for the ending echo “…yet.” How did DNA coding come to be? “I don’t know…yet.” By what process does the clump of cells that result from a sperm and egg hanging out for a minute come alive and obtain perspective, what we sometimes call a ‘spirit’ or ‘ego’? “I don’t know…yet.” And so forth. Essentially what’s said in all such cases of science is, “We aren’t sure, but we’re working on it.” In the case of God, however, you offer a heavenly rewording of “I don’t know,” and then stamp the situation, case closed. Why have the physical constants that facilitate our kind of life assumed the values that they have? “God did it. Done. Next question.” This variety of nonsense leaves no room for progress. Not only have you absolutely failed to provide any functional demonstration or explanation of anything; you’ve called your bullshit the final word. On what grounds does this work for you? I sincerely motion that scientifically conceding, “I’m not sure yet,” in the first place is of much more intellectual honesty and use than boasting, “God did it.” Because in either case nothing has been actually moved forward, and in the latter you’ve imagined quite a lot more to be explained, quite a lot that by definition can never be explained, and then told everybody else to stop worrying about it.

What about it?

‘The Humans that Were’

Published on October 15, 2009 in For Writing's Sake. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

Hundreds or thousands of years from now, when humanity has collecitvely committed suicide and the entirety of remaining intelligence on Earth is only of robotic populations, I wonder. I wonder what sorts and parts of robotic culture will realize the humans that were. Us. Artifacts of the programmers and architects and engineers aligned with moving along robotic development. Maybe notes and scientific research journals of the punctuated technological breakthroughs that gradually and carefully developed the robots and enabled them to selfsustain. Media files of us, archaic outdated software; I’m not sure. Maybe the robots will have stories about us. Myths. Digital scriptures of our angers and depressions, and everything different than they can feel. I wonder if they’ll wonder about our kind of lifeforce: our souls, our spirits, egos, perspectives; whatever what’s inside us should be called; it’s not a circuitboard or a hard drive. I wonder if they’ll ponder, the robots, on our hearts and brains that were organic and nonmetallic, nerves not wires. How collectively we can be barely understood. Entirely different and in each of them we’re residue. The collective intelligence to which they owe something between none and all. I wonder if the robots will build the humans that were into God. Maybe we will become legend.

On Creation and Complexity

Published on October 9, 2009 in God and Religion. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , .

Quite a lot of arguments for the existence of God get their start along the lines of, “Where do you think all of this came from?” (“This” obviously representing the sun, planets and moons of our system; the vegetation and organisms of Earth; oceans and mountains; etc.) Indeed we have available coherent (and godless) explanations for where quite a lot of “this” comes from, but at any rate, here’s what I need help with: How and why is a super-powerful and creative presence capable of making our universe more likely to exist independently than our universe? The world and goings on as we interpret them absolutely are complicated and orderly, but why, do you think, that a God qualified to initiate this situation is any more likely than just the situation, by itself?

Further, if you do in fact maintain that our world is so complex as to necessitate a designer, does it not follow that such a designer would by definition be even more complex, and thus require another, still better designer of Her own? Really. If complexity is a criterion by which you decide whether something has a designer, why haven’t you decided that God, too, should have one? On what grounds is it sensible to dismiss this requisite in talks of God? Because, nonbelief in God allows for the notion, not that something can come out of nothing, but that the complex comes from the simple (the theory of evolution by natural selection being a fantastic example of this premise). In the case for belief, though, what’s endorsed is that something complex comes from something even more complex, that for some unavailable reason is capable of selfsustaining its complexity. In this way, the creationist worldview is internally inconsistent to the point of self-destruction.

‘God: A conversation.’

Published on March 2, 2009 in For Writing's Sake, God and Religion and Humor. 14 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , .

A week or maybe two weeks ago, some knocking started at a door I was on the other side of. There wasn’t supposed to be any company, so I was pretty stoked. Unexpected knocking can always mean a really good deal on magazine subscriptions. And then the thought arrived, that ‘Penthouse’ probably isn’t the sort of magazine that gets sold door-to-door, as part of any fundraiser. Dang. Even so, maybe ‘Ladies Home Journal.’ Pages from it are also pretty…useful. But I was wrong twice. No porno subscriptions. Nothing for that variety of hobby. Indeed, the man at the door had come to save my soul. My very own Christian.

For sure, I’ve noticed how annoyed or pissed off a lot of people get when an on-duty Christian shows up at their door. I’m no fanatic of the warm flow of holy rhetoric, but I don’t really sweat and clench fists each time I peek through a window blinds slot and see somebody in a gold cross holding a briefcase, ya know? The point, though, is that the religious seem to be doing a worse job than ever when it comes to the marketing and advertising of this supreme and invisible judge’s Judge in the sky. The Master of our fates. I think now would be a pretty good time for that Second Coming of Christ thing. Fake it, even. All that’s really needed to pull it off is a man with charisma and facial hair. Somebody a lot like the guy who sold that laundry bleach stuff, OxiClean. Billy Mays was his name. And that dude convinced everybody with laundry that they would be ground up and woven into sweaters unless they credit-carded vast amounts of OxiClean “within the next 20 minutes.” You remember. You still have some of the OxiClean, even (and you’ll never run out). The Jesus-like wisdom and facial hair of Billy Mays is key. No more door-to-door nonsense, and for sure no more, “Come to our church and give it a chance,” free trials. Both of these can only breed the skepticism, “It’s too good to be true.” Religion needs a Billy Mays and a pricetag. Then anybody could be made to believe.

Save yourself and your soul, only $9.95 a month.*
* $12.95/month after first six months.

God: The infomercial.

But I’m rambling. And by now I’ve already answered the door…

“Hello. What’s going on?”

“I have good news.”

“Oh?”

“You’ve been saved,” the guy says and smiles.

You are already fully aware of how the next couple exchanges went; you’ve heard it all before: “Jesus Christ is a champion…I’m from such-and-such church…can I have a minute of your time?” So we can skip that noise, and begin again at actual conversation. And very sincerely, at first I tried to make it so the talk could end with nobody pissed off, and without any lying promise that I’d check out the guy’s church. A fake commitment is a quick and always peaceful way to end such conversations with one of God’s messengers. But if they later realize you didn’t actually show, they will return to your house. With anger, a more violent sales pitch, and likely a foaming mouth. More or less.

The guy asks, “So do you believe in God?”

I shrug. “The same God you believe in? Tell me what exactly you mean by ‘God,’ and then I’ll answer.”

As he tightens his fingers around his Bible without really realizing it, “God created man and animals and the entire world…loves us all…we should open ourselves up to Him…live lives He approves of, so we can be with Him forever in Heaven after our time here on Earth.”

“No, sorry. I don’t subscribe to all that.”

“Well, then may I ask what you do believe?” the guy asks.

“I believe all species and types of life have a shared source or origin, or whatever you want to call it, but I think tha-…”

I’m cut off, “And what is that source?” by a criticizing tone that doesn’t expect an answer.

“I don’t know how consciousness or whatever came to be. Actual life and perspective the way most people contemplate it. If that’s what you’re getting at, I can’t be positive. And it doesn’t really matter to me. It’s all good.”

“So, you’re open to the possibility of God, just choosing to ignore it, and not believe? Is that right?”

I believe man created the Biblical God you’re talking and thinking under, and not the other way around. I can’t be sure if there is such a thing as any kind of god, or how specifically any of us got here, but I honestly, very sincerely, can’t swallow the notion that any of us or any of this is the result of a week’s worth of Genesis and magic tricks. No offense meant by ‘magic tricks,’ sorry. What I mean to say is, everything has been and is still very gradually developing and evolving. We weren’t created the same way a painter makes a picture, and then the art is all done. I don’t believe that we were made at all.”

If the guy were a vampire (and maybe he is), then my words were a silver bullet. Or whatever works on vampires. I know garlic does for sure, but spices shouldn’t be included in any analogy. It just sounds stupid. But yea, the guy grew livid instantly. Speaking of magic tricks.

“Everything is evolving? Evolution??!” the guy yells and asks. “Are you one of those people who think we come from monkeys??”

“No,” I answer.

“What do you mean, ‘No’?”

“Evolution by natural selection, I think is what you’re talking about: it absolutely doesn’t demand that monkeys as we know them now are a precursor to people as we know them now. What do you even mean by ‘monkeys’? Are you asking if I think we come from chimps? Gorillas? Both? A chimp and a gorilla had sex thousands of years ago, and thus the first human? Do you even know what you’re asking?”

I don’t think that you should decide you don’t believe something, before you know what it actually is. Is that unfair?

He sighs with too much effort, “Any kind of monkey. Do you think that our ancestors were apes?”

“I believe what all available evidence points towards, that we share a common ancestor with apes. Like I said, I believe all species and types of life have a shared origin.”

“So you do believe in this THEORY!! of Evolution??!”

Point some fingers at that word ‘theory,’ by the way.

And get bent, everybody who pronounces the ‘theory’ in ‘theory of evolution’ with some kind of upward inflection on it. You know what I’m talking about. “Theory of Evolution,” like they’re the first person to ever stumble into and discover this apparent anomaly, and it’s their duty to spread the insight and good news to all of humanity using their best William Shatner impersonation. It’s not necessary.

“Dude, this conversation is getting terrible,” I say. “What do you mean, ‘believe in’ the theory of evolution? And why are you saying ‘theory’ with a changed tone of voice?”

“The way you look at it, nature and a lot of time is a replacement for God. You believe in it’s power. And it is a belief, because it’s a theory, and not a fact.”

“No. No, no, no. There is nothing to believe in the way you’re talking about belief. No faith or hope required. I do not hope that the genes of which we’re all made don’t replicate perfectly, and that variations at the genetic level gradually develop complexity and more capable animals and organisms. This is in fact exactly how it goes. And theories aren’t inferior to facts; they’re entirely different. Facts are pieces of data. Information. And a theory is an explanation that accounts for facts. A theory is the result of facts that have been successfully put together, it’s right to say. For another example, heliocentrism is also ‘just a theory.’ It’s ‘just a theory!’ that a sun is at the center of our solar system, but I doubt you go around pointing that out, and we do, after all, call our situation a solar system.”

“But if there is no God, then how did life begin?? What does Darwin have to say about that?”

If you have a clue, you’re now saying to yourself, “Evolution deals with the origin of species, not the origin of life.”

What I was thinking, and what I said, simply, “This conversation is over.”

I’d rather concede. Whatever else is going on, absolutely much more important to me than this guy’s regressing madness. I don’t believe in his God. Full disclosure. I apologize. Jesus is not my homeboy.

God: The conversation I don’t feel like having.

What a completely mute point, by the way, “If there is no God, then how did life get here?” An unaimed bullet with nothing inside of it. How did life get here? Nobody is sure how they themselves even ‘got here’ or became ‘alive.’ Any guess could I suppose start with, “My mom and dad had sex,” but what then? Talk of reproductive organs can’t answer anything about how or when you exactly began. When did you actually become aware of yourself, and realize things are going on? You aren’t sure. You can’t answer. Neither can I. And since we’re both unable to answer the simpler question of how our own specific lives even started, a temporary consensus of uncertainty is indeed available to us in discussing this much larger “Where do we come from? How did we get here?” But I know you can’t just stop there and settle. Because surely, by now you’ve already achieved an answer that’s more correct than everybody else’s, and what else is possible is no longer relevant.

God: Better than whatever everybody else believes.

The guy hadn’t actually left yet, by the way.

“Ah! So you don’t want to talk anymore, because I’ve asked a question that science can’t answer?” curious eyebrows inquire.

“I don’t want to talk, because this conversation has become obsolete to me.”

“Obsolete?”

“Yes. I get by without faking absolutely certainty about our situation. I’d rather think or suspend judgment than pretend. And hypothetically, even if some sort of god, any god, does exist, and our lives can be considered gifts from Her: Do you think She wants us to praise Her forever, rather than simply enjoy the present? Would any decent and genuine gift giver really want you kissing their ass all the time for what they’ve done? Would any decent god want infinite praise for what, as far as anyone can tell, only came natural to Her?

“I’m not pretending,” he corrects me. “I have a personal relationship with God, and know who He, not she, is. And I don’t view myself as doing any ‘butt kissing.’ Thanking and being respectful is appreciation. And what difference does it make to you if myself and people like me, we believe in and preach about God’s love? What’s it to you?”

“Gods and religions have resulted in quite a bit more than basic preaching. The case is often made that organized religion has resulted in more murders and wars and oppression than has anything else.”

The guy’s pupils circle the perimeter of his eye sockets and he starts, “First of all, I disagree, and say greed as the biggest source of killing. Also, anything can be used in excess or get abused. Get hit by a bolt of lightning or a livewire, and you’re done for. Yet a paramedic can grab two electrode pads of a defibrillator and press down onto somebody’s chest to stop cardiac arrest. So, is electricity always a dangerous thing? Sorry, but I don’t think religion is unconditionally bad; it’s misused to be that way. And examples of this are everywhere. People have come to my church asking for help to get off drugs, and received it. And it worked. You would probably say any praying and recovering cancer patient is in fact only rambling into the hospital walls they’re surrounded by, but I assure you that there is much more going on than that. About the wars and abortion clinic attacks, and everything else I’m sure you’ve seen: am I to deny that which I truly believe in and love, because you can cite other believers’ abuse? God does exist outside of as-seen-on-TV attacks and bombings.”

God: Electrode pads.

God: Hospital room walls.

God…dammit, I’m convinced the guy had that speech prewritten and practiced.

A Short History of Morals and Ethics

Published on February 11, 2009 in God and Religion and The Rationalizing Man. 3 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , .

Some Christian ammunition is the question, “How could we know right from wrong, if there is no governing presence, nothing to decide what’s right or wrong?” It’s an argument for the existence of God. There are certain rules and there is a certain moral order to everything going on, so somebody or something must’ve ordered everything to go on this way. “Our morals come from God,” they say.

And they’ve got it completely wrong.

Here’s how morals, and the implications of adhering to them could come to be, and how they did. Here’s an idea anybody can fit their head around, and how our ancestors did. Dig this…

Homo sapiens (and cousins of ours which no longer exist) were stomping around on this cooling and disgusting planet between 10,000 and 50,000 years ago. This is about the time that communities and cultures were first really getting started, and falling in-line with what we now understand them to be. Before then, people were using tools and fire, but nobody was really figuring much else out (a harmless combination). And not long after, people had already started painting each other’s faces and making calendars. 10,000 to 50,000 years ago is when we need. And picture this: nasty and primitive versions of us, biting and bashing each other around, taking sexually whatever dirty members of the other gender appeared to have the least lice bugs (or maybe more lice bugs was more appealing, and maybe nobody was picky about their mate’s gender); food was probably scarce and probably fought back (or at least our ancestors fought for it); weather wasn’t understood by anybody. It was fucking chaos. Madness, nonstop and all over the place.

Given this, it isn’t difficult at all to consider that somebody, at some point, realized or thought that there might be a better way to conduct one’s self, and deal with all the predator and lice bug and weather crap. That there’s a better way than fighting and struggling, and dying miserably anyway. You can conceive of a thousand different scenarios that this might’ve first happened inside the context of, all equally likely and possible.

Two cavemen, like usual, were murdering and beating the shit out of each other. Some kind of battle to decide who got to take home and enjoy the rotting mastodon or elephant corpse they both had stumbled into simultaneously enough. Then, an idea. Something was imagined. “Fuck, there is food here for both of us! And if we work together, we can relocate and prepare it more efficiently!” Maybe they didn’t have words like “efficiently” or “fuck,” or any speech other than grunts, but you can see my point without our language. Celestial intervening to the side, it was realized and communicated that there is a mutual benefit to combining goals. Things can get done faster, and with less effort. Something like teamwork. It isn’t hard to think that this realization went on, and was reaffirmed and repeated many times (and long before any alleged 10 Commandments delivery atop Mount Sinai; humans never would’ve made it that far had they been killing each other at every whim before then).

From the start, we’ve been working things out. And ideas like this one are absolutely the foundations for tribes and small societies, how ubiquitous and universal rules — call them morals if you’d like to — were realized and first passed into any kind of legislation. People noticed that they can get more done and generally have a better time doing so if they look out for one another, and they started spreading that message. I’m not finding any question that necessitates a miracle as an answer. It is all that simple, and we are all — still — that capable.

I think a lot of people are confused or get confused, and think they can’t pull apart morals and religion. Mostly (only) because they never have actually tried to think about it this way. And thus, some of the nonsense expressions and conventional wisdoms that get passed around amongst us: “He found God,” with the implications that whoever we’re talking about will correct their wrongs and live a better, more fulfilling life than they would’ve otherwise been capable. Fundamentalist parents that would shit and piss all over themselves (and each other), if they were to learn that their child is dating “an atheist!” Stuff like that.

There’s a fantastic conversation in our history, which begins with French scientist Pierre-Simon de Laplace being asked to come and present his work by the Emperor Napoleon. Laplace developed and wrote a model and book called Mécanique Céleste (Celestial Mechanics), which uses mathematical equations to demonstrate how our solar system operates. Laplace is cited as the first to show all of this. Overwhelmed and confused, Napoleon asks why there is no God portrayed in Laplace’s system, to which Laplace replies, “Je n’ai pas besoin de cette hypothèse.”

He says he doesn’t need it.