Atheism

I grew up in a very religious (fundamentalist Christian) household; a faith-based approach to everything was encouraged on a daily, if not hourly, basis. But to their credit, while my parents presented their beliefs with absolute certainty, they did occasionally suggest coming to independent conclusions. Genesis 1 was probably one of the first things I learned to read and it introduced a lot of perplexing questions, such as: what did God do for eternity before deciding to create a universe? And (later), why did He create the Earth before the rest of the universe, it would seem more natural to work from the top down.

But most importantly, at the same time I learned that there were many different religions, with completely different Truths. It just did not seem possible that one specific group (ours) could happen to be the right one (with all the others damned to Hell)! This thought spurred a growing skepticism in me. This grew very strong as all the questions I asked led to circular answers, and everything that could possibly be claimed as evidence (anecdotes of answered prayer or other miracles) could be claimed with equal fervor by other faiths.

But at this point, I was still very young, and decided to give it all a try, to be diligent and do everything those around me were doing (in 3rd grade I started at a Christian school started by our Church). I memorized the ten commandments and prayed daily. I was told that eventually I would feel something, occasionally described as "a still, small voice." And yet, as the months turned into years, the only words ever forming in my mind were my own. My skepticism deepened.

But I hit upon the "argument from design" (though I had no idea that it was called that). The natural world was too intricately wonderful to not have a super-intelligent designer. So there was at least one basic principle I could agree on: the existence of God.

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I was completely and utterly mystified, baffled, and dumbfounded by the article in the New York Times entitled Priest-Cosmologist Wins $1.6 Million Templeton Prize. In the very first paragraph, the author states that said Priest/Cosmologist (Michael Heller) has answered the question: Does the universe need to have a cause? Now, I can think of no more fundamental question, and no more extraordinary of an answer, than the ultimate causality of the universe. Yet, despite this epic lead-in, nowhere in the article did I find out what the dude's conclusion is! I read, and re-read, and re-read the article, thinking surely that I had missed something. I have just re-read it yet again. Now that's a tease.

In any case, whatever his theory on the subject is, it is surely worthy of the prize. But something else in the article caught my attention, this quote from Professer Heller: "Science gives us knowledge, and religion gives us meaning. Both are prerequisites of the decent existence." I would like to think that meaning derives from knowledge, but I guess not everyone is built that way. And I certainly feel that a decent existence can be had without religion, that spirituality can be sought without reference to pre-historical myths and mystics.

Anyway, what physicists have determined (and perhaps Dr. Heller contributed to this, the NYTimes didn't see it fit to print!) is that a universe would be created out of nothing but the laws of physics. It doesn't entirely get rid of ultimate causality, the best we can do it seems is to accept that the universe just is.

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On a recent episode of Point of Inquiry, Alan Dershowitz talks about secularism and the Founding Fathers. He talks about how, while people like Thomas Jefferson were certainly Deists, there is a sort of revisionist history at work to say that his use of the word "God" (in the Declaration of Independence) implies an endorsement of the Christian personal deity.

In fact, in the Declaration of Independence TJ says "Laws of Nature and of Nature's God". I would think the order of those two as worded, was important to him. All other references to a supreme being in the Declaration of Independence are indirect and generic. It implies to me that he was thinking of the term "God" in the same way that Spinoza did, or Einstein later would, as an impersonal agent, either the Prime Mover or embodied in everything ("God as the laws of Nature" some have called it).

So, while Christians and others might try to retroactively adopt Thomas Jefferson and others into their cause, it is really quite a stretch. Obviously, science had not yet advanced to the point where we might plausibly explain everything there is (aside from existence itself) in purely natural terms, so atheism or agnosticism were extremely radical ideas.

I've been trying a few new podcasts (and vidcasts) lately, but the one that has really caught my attention is the Center for Inquiry's Point of Inquiry which concerns skepticism and secularism.

Two interviews in particular make for a nice match: Ann Druyan and Richard Dawkins.

So there's this idea of "non-overlapping magisteria", the idea that science and spirituality explore completely distinct domains. Both Dawkins and Druyan discredit this idea, making the case that there is only one magisterium, only one search for truth. And naturally, that science is the most effective means for arriving at truth (or, more accurately, for discarding falsehoods).

I liked Druyan's suggestion that wonder provided by science is a better spiritual base than religion.

My mom called the other day, we hadn't talked in quite a while and she brought up the topic of the recent hurricanes, specifically how (she felt) they were evidence of God's wrath. Too much listening to Pat Robertson and his ilk. Nonetheless in their world, I know, it makes total logical sense. They believe in an Old Testament style God who kicks ass and takes names. Not some button pusher, or one who retired two thousand years ago. So if there's a deity behind every event, then of course it makes rational sense (to them) that there's a reason why events unfold when and where they do. Why a hurricane goes a little east or a little west, why a tsunami breaks on one day versus the day before and so on. And, you have to admit, this time it almost looks like they have "evidence" to point to. I don't take this seriously, but think about it. The Mississipi Gulf Coast area had allowed development of massive casino operations in recent years. The public was mostly against it, but legislators snuck in a special provision allowing these "riverboat" casino buildings to be on giant barges moored just offshore. And then of course there was the Southern Decadence or whatever festival planned to be in NOLA the day after Katrina struck. So here you have two things that fundamentalists love to hate, gambling and gays, all concentrated in the two areas that were hardest hit. Coincidence? You be the judge.... Personally, I don't believe in the supernatural, at least not in any of the popular scenarious (ghosts, UFO's, omnipotent deities, what have you). I believe that (as I like to say) nature is supernatural, technically that's an oxymoron, but I like it for a number of reasons. First, it captures something fundamental about the situation, namely nature's ability to transcend itself, which I wrote about in a previous entry. Secondly, it alludes that there may well be aspects of the universe, that seem, or are, genuinely contradictory. Zen seems to fully embrace that, but hat's a topic for another time. It's always healty to interject a little discord; our minds are too puny to fully comprehend the universe, and some people need to be reminded of that.

I've been meaning to write about this very topic, but my friend Dan took the words right outta my mouth. I'd put it this way: religion, faith and spirituality are truly distinct and separate things. I grew up in a ultra-religious evangelical Christian family so I know that many if not most people confuse at least two or all three of these as parts of one thing. I just have never been able to see it that way. First, I see spirituality as being a trait that every person possesses. Just about everyone is born with it to some degree, it's all in how you develop it. My friend Andrew has called spirituality a "meta emotion" or emotion about your emotions. I think he's really on to something there. I'd say emotion is too narrow a term, but certainly in the "meta" aspect, or a way of "jumping out of the system" to awareness about awareness, or consciousness reflecting on itself, some attempt to sense higher meaning and purpose... I think that's on the right track. Transcendence is the word. What I don't believe is that it can be objectively tied to any one belief system. Your faith may be something that helps you develop a spiritial sense, but really that is only a subjective validation of a single faith. In other words, there are many independent paths to spirituality, just because you happen to find one does not mean that it is the only true one. Richard Dawkins describes faith as an example of a meme, or a set of ideas that replicate more or less consistently. Like their biological equivilant the gene, a meme can mutate as it is transmitted from one person to another. But some memes are bundled in a form to ensure they continue unchanged. There are even "viral" memes that contain instructions that they must be passed on. Christian faiths have spread like this for centuries. They typically come with the ideas that a) this faith is the one true faith and b) it is your duty to spread the faith. Thus the faith meme has a mechanism to defeat your mental immume system: your skepticism and your analytical skills, in addition to a mechanism to ensure its continued spread. Religion seems to me as a system of control, a hierarchical power structure, a self-maintaining sytem of authority. It can be local or it can be global but basically it's all about maintaining itself. Anyone in the structure has a vested interest in ensuring the structure survives. By nature, such structures are very very conservative: the only acceptable change is that which will help preserve the religion. Any other potential change will be strenuously suppressed. Faith is the most important tool for control, but it's just one weapon in the arsenal. Traditional rites, majestic temples and indoctrination are other powerful mechanisms. Another it to instill a need for repentence as a prerequisite to experience spirituality. I'd say that is mental slavery. Read More

The universe is fantastically good at creating structure. Things are extremely heirarchical from the top-level on down: superclusters, galaxies, stars, planets, etc. And at some point these sub-structures become aware: that is, are able to store a representation of what they are experiencing. So we can say that the universe becomes self-aware, e.g. you are one chunk of stardust looking back at other chunks of stardust. This is maybe the deepest fact that has been discovered about the universe; namely, that it seems built to become self-aware. Not "built" in the sense of "designed" (I'm not going there!) but rather in the sense of it being produced by a set of natural processes. A very high-level overview of those processes is: nature tries to be maximally efficient; often efficiency means creating sub-structure; hence it is recursive. Now we get to our own self-awareness (awareness of awareness, perhaps what is meant by "consciousness"). That's pretty transcendental, not just because it is some mystical shit, but it literally transcends the system--now we are able to reason about what might be beyond the scope of the system. We could call that "meta-awareness." This meta-awareness is not unique to our species (IMHO). Probably it is a by-product of any sufficiently advanced minds. Or rather, minds build virtual structure (representations or models), the process here is also recursive, meta-awareness pops out with enough virtual sub-structure. So here we are, building up our bodies of knowledge, this increasingly elaborate model of what the universe is... perhaps it is the ultimate narcissism. A universe, bent on a journey of self-discovery, by which we are the willing participants. Read More