The Hubble Deep Field: Look it up. How many galaxies can you count? And here we are, alone, looking.
Welcome to the Metalkort... but you may not be welcome for long, not unless you're willing to fight for your spot.
I wanted to start big, to let us know who we're dealing with. Got the balls to weigh in? Hope so, because tumbleweeds won't roll through this Kort.
The Universe. We live in it. Something exists, and something is greater than nothing.
To the materialists, non-believers, hardcore atheists, and cold reasoners: Why? Doesn't it seem like there's more to it than just these atoms? How do you purport that your life has meaning? You make your own meaning? How so?
How do you explain the existence of life in a Universe that seems decidedly unfriendly to life? The Anthropic Principle, we know, we know. You'd better explain it more convincingly than that, and if you invoke the existence of parallel worlds in an undetectable Multiverse, you'd better explain why you believe in that and not a Creator.
To the theists, believers, Christians, and mystics: Why would God decide to hide himself so thoroughly? What single piece of evidence or massive life event led to your rock-solid belief in the face of all your senses tell you? And if God is so loving, why all the suffering? You'd better explain, especially since you or someone you know has had someone close die of cancer.
On top of that, how does it feel to continually have your 'God made it' explanations continually be supplanted by the discoveries of scientists? Ever feel like your God is the god of the gaps, the small God who lives inside the Planck length or hovers just before the Big Bang? Are you really so confident that we won't figure it all out? I mean, come on, we've only been at this science game for 400 years and look what we've figured out. Where will we be in 10,000 years?
To the agnostics, the ones who've decided that we don't know and we might never know: Pick a side or GTFO.
Seriously, you're really going to be laying on your death bed with the old 'wait and see' approach? How can that possibly make your life feel meaningful? Sure, we're asking big questions here, but you decided to stop at 'don't know, wait and see?' The Metalkort is about thought, and if you're taking the easy ticket to the happy land of non-thinking, then keep on trucking. Or tell me I've got it all wrong, and tell me why.
What about me, then? I'm not letting myself off the hook. I'm a theist, a Christian, a believer in a Creator and the meaning of life and a Story. I study science, and all I see in the natural world is evidence. The only thing my atheist peers and friends see is natural processes and a human race that got incredibly lucky.
But I don't need the natural world. Descartes laid down the facts: I think, therefore I am. Well, I think, and therefore I believe. Both sides need to grapple with the existence of consciousness, so let's get this Tork started.
Post your answers: personal, direct, and simple. We know all the tricks of argument and rhetoric, and St. Nuke won't let you try to fleece the crowd. Use the comments section for thrusts and parries, but if you have something substantial to say, you'd better contact Insect Brain with your desire and willingness to post.
En garde.
Oh, and to the lurkers, the trolls, the casual readers who read these words and move on, only to return and hang in the shadows? We see you, and you'd better join the fray. Or else.
Roughly one hour from my request to post to hitting that submit button -- it's that easy, and if I can do it, you can (and should) as well.
ReplyDeleteI believe there is a God, that he is benevolent, and that he takes a personal interest in us. All of that has been relatively easy for me to believe. What's more challenging for me to believe is that he has a definite purpose in mind for us -- I don't deny it but I often have to take it on faith.
ReplyDeleteRegarding the first three items: In itself, the anthropic principle is reasonable enough. If there's a Universe -- or a vast (perhaps infinite) set of "parallel universes" which, together, comprise the full Universe -- then however rare consciousness may be, that consciousness will have questions about where it comes from, and why consciousness seems to be such an exception to the Universe's general rule.
The problem is that, once you've accepted that, you're expected to buy the idea that consciousness is a by-product of physical processes. In that case, we can try postulating that consciousness is illusory and not that big a deal -- "you only think you think," as an Ayn Rand villain put it. For many folks, including me, that isn't satisfying. It doesn't jibe with my own experience of consciousness; it may wax and wane, but it's definitely there.
There is an alternate notion, though, that makes more sense: that consciousness is real and is an inherent built-in potential of matter. We can experience it directly, but depending on its exact nature we may or may not ever be able to quantify it by scientific methods.
Once you consider that notion, there's a similar one that flips things around: matter could be a built-in potential of consciousness, a potential currently realized in the Universe we can observe. This was a counterintuitive idea to me when I first encountered it, but after all, our current knowledge of physics tells us that light, energy, and matter can all be transmuted into one another, and Light has always been man's favorite symbol for consciousness; isn't it possible that symbol is a little more literal than we give it credit for?
The difficulty with this -- which leads to the fourth item, about purpose -- is that we experience consciousness as something that grows gradually through our lives, and can be damaged by a good crack on the head, or apparently snuffed out at the moment of death. If you stipulate that consciousness is the basis of everything, and that the material Universe is a congealed form of it, then you have to wonder how that consciousness was conscious enough to create everything to begin with. Under such circumstances it's easier to picture the Universe as being the product of a cosmic deaf-mute lashing out in rage than as being the perfect fruition of a divine plan.
However, theology traditionally accepts God as being outside of space and time, capable of viewing it all at once the way we could browse an animated flipbook; so what we call "creation" could be something like God window-shopping in the realm of probability (moving upon the face of the waters, if you will) looking for a home worthy of children that would bear sparks of his consciousness and become members of his body.
I don't have a stunning conclusion here. Those are just some of my current thoughts on the subject.
Well as an agnostic, I guess I've already been dismissed out of hand. Which is ironic, in a post that purports to encourage discussion about the big issues, because as far as the two extremes - theist and atheist - are concerned, the matter's already been settled.
ReplyDeleteAgnosticism can be about riding the fence, 'tis true. It might be a lazy and insouciant way of dismissing the impassioned yammering of both sides and kicking back on the couch with a bag of Doritos and a skull bong.
It might also be an honest way of admitting that both sides have compelling arguments, and that there's no way for any human agency to make a 100% airtight case for either. I tend toward the scientific because those matters are within the potential grasp of human minds, but acknowledge that the deep human need for the spiritual can't be entirely baseless.
"there's no way for any human agency to make a 100% airtight case for either. I tend toward the scientific because those matters are within the potential grasp of human minds, but acknowledge that the deep human need for the spiritual can't be entirely baseless."
ReplyDeleteYou're the one I want to corner and hurt for your rational folly. Sorry. Someday we'll do that dance. Until that day comes, enjoy your insouciance.
I know you do. I'll wait.
ReplyDeleteapotheosis:
ReplyDeleteA couple of questions, then... Do you think it will or could ever change for you? You're not convinced of anything right now, but can you envision the existence of some thought or argument or idea or experience, some discovery that would tip you one way or the other?
I mean, if aliens showed up with video and demonstrated that they had planted Jesus on the planet and that they were responsible for life on Earth, would that tide you over to a purely scientific worldview for good?
If you were suddenly given a vision from an angel in the middle of the night of the future and it played out exactly that way, would you embrace a belief in the supernatural?
And barring events like those on either extreme, do you think that it's possible that there are already things like that? Have you looked over absolutely everything and made up your mind? Are you actively looking for new evidence to tip the scales, or sitting back?
I ask to keep you in the conversation, not drive you out.
Of course I think it could change, and I'm open to the idea. I admit this was not always the case...I went through my "god definitely doesn't exist" phase, but eventually had to come to terms with how asinine it was to insist science was the be-all end-all of existence when so many questions remained unaddressed.
ReplyDeleteI like the idea of a scientific explanation of the universe because by definition, like other hypotheses, it's open to question and falsifiable. If it isn't, it's not science; witness AGW's devolution from a science to a religion the moment The Deciders declared that the "science was settled" and debate was closed.
This tendency towards human-scale understanding on my part does not signal a refusal to accept convincing alternatives. Should an angel present itself and the vision of a future which came to pass, I couldn't arbitrarily refuse the input of the senses I live by.
Do I think events like that have already happened? I think millions of people are convinced they have, on either extreme. I think that the charlatans and snake-oil salesmen are far outweighed by people of good will who actually believe what they experienced. I just don't think something that far beyond the realm of what's explicable by ordinary means can be fully conveyed by words, it has to be experienced as a revelation by and for an individual.
Have I looked over absolutely everything? No. Certainly no more so than anyone else in history who's seen enough to push them over the edge into a firm belief in one side or the other. And make no mistake, I'd like to believe in an afterlife as much as the next guy. Who really wants this to be the proverbial "it?" Wouldn't it be great to spend forever with loved ones lost?
But I know enough about belief to understand that you can say you believe and sing hosannas all day long, but that's a completely different animal from actual belief. If I come to belief someday it must necessarily be by my own path, a place I arrived at through means I can't even guess right now. Saying one believes "just in case" seems as cynical as deathbed conversions...if God exists, I can only imagine he (or she) would resent the hell out of being reduced to an insurance policy.
Do I get extra points for completely killing a conversation?
ReplyDeleteNo, but you've earned enough credit to write a post of your own. Perhaps tell us why you're taking the path you're taking, why you think it's better to be a rationalist.
ReplyDeleteHave you clocked in with Insect Brain yet? You're needed to keep this effort going before it dies on the table.
By the way, you lurkers out there, I said that we see you. Instapunk creates a new site (and then some), you read his invitation, and then you sit on your hands? Come on, this is the place to speak and be heard!
I'll drop him a line.
ReplyDeleteI believe in God. I did as a child and I do today. I never courted the philosophy of atheism. That’s not to say I’ve never been exposed to the argument for non-belief. While my mother was coming to terms with the inevitable result of mortality I never doubted God’s existence. I was angry. I felt wronged. The thing is, I was angry at someone, I felt I had been wronged by someone. After the anger and resentment passed I think the experience actually reaffirmed my belief not only in a God, but a beneficent loving and caring God.
ReplyDeleteI think part of the reason my belief wasn’t cast into doubt is the religious philosophy I was raised in. Life is viewed as a school of sorts, where the subjects are primarily faith and obedience, grace and works. Without the trials and tribulations that beset mankind there would be no chance to develop either faith or the character necessary to obedience. In that light, a divine creator who does not intervene in every misfortune or bad eventuality is not unkind or uncaring, but rather an anxious parent aware of the dangers of the jungle gym, but also aware that without adversity or challenge there is no growth of faith or character. My mother was dying, and though we’d asked God to cure her cancer he hadn’t done so. Or wait, did he? I’m guessing since she shuffled off this mortal coil she doesn’t worry about cancer much anymore. Either way, cancer was part of the tribulation she bore during her life, and in the view of her creator, a means of allowing her to develop greater faith and character.
I was raised in a very religious household. My family read scripture every morning before breakfast, I attended weekly worship services with my parents, I was involved in church youth groups. All this certainly helped my belief, but there is a moment that defines my belief. I didn’t have a vision, hear the voice of God, or become one with the universe. I suppose in theatrical terms it was a rather lack luster affair. An ordinary boy, on an ordinary summer night, in an ordinary room, of an ordinary house; however, my midnight supplication elicited something unseen and unheard that reached down through all the layers of my previous religious experience and planted a spiritual bedrock of belief. That’s my story and it probably has something to do with the years of previous religious experience.
Time to throw my hat in the ring. I am a Christian and never really had a whole lot of doubts in believing there is a God because the more I've thought about it over the years, the more logical it seems. I can boil my thinking down to four reasons. If these arguments sound familiar to any of you, it's because I didn't think of them first:
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, I believe that if you were walking through a field and came upon a camera, or if you saw a painting on a wall, you would wonder who built the camera and who painted the picture. Your first impulse would not be to think that all of the circuits and lenses assembled themselves into a functional camera nor that paints happened to arrange themselves on their own in such a way as to form a beautiful picture. I feel that evolutionists are trying to tell us that the camera and painting actually did form themselves, and nobody made them to take pictures or to be beautiful, those just happen to be completely random side effects. That's not to say that I think evolution is 100% false, but if it's real I don't see why it's so unreasonable to suggest that a higher power set it in motion. Maybe Christianity has some gaps, but I see unquesioning devotion to evolution as a sort of intellectual get out of jail free card because it's the atheist equivalent of saying, "It's God's will." In other words, it answers all of your questions without really having to explain anything. Why is something a certain way? Because it evolved that way. How is something able to do a certain thing? Because it evolved that ability. I have been reading the Gospel of Willie for the first time this week, and Harry's sermon is everything I don't believe in (aside from the social commentary on Baby Boomers). I don't think mankind is a cosmic accident and that we are slaves to chemicals in our brains, but that seems to be the evolutionists' way to fill in the gaps in their own beliefs.
Secondly, I believe in universal moral laws. I believe that even if the Nazis won WWII and brainwashed the entire world into thinking it was okay to murder Jews, it would still be morally wrong. One of the major arguments atheists use against the existence of God is to ask how He could allow so much suffering and bad stuff to take place in the world? This is what C.S. Lewis says constantly tripped him up, though, because he could not figure out WHY he thought all of these bad events in the world were bad. If there are universal moral laws, there must be a moral law-giver; we did not give these laws to ourselves and we cannot change them because we want to. If you argue that there is no law-giver, then there cannot be any universal laws and everything is decided by which group is strong enough to impose their will on another group and that will decide what is right.
Third, I am a Christian because I think there is a lot of truth in the Bible. There is a lot to what I mean by saying this, and I can elaborate if anyone wants me to, but let me use one example. I recently started reading the Bible cover to cover for the first time ever. I have studied parts of it in Sunday school or high school, but never read the whole thing. I decided if I really want to call myself a Christian, I should at least do that. The main thing I am looking for are passages that say things we know today to be false. I don't mean things we consider unlikely, such as Moses living for almost a thousand years old or Jesus turning water into wine, I mean things like Earth being a part of the Yggdrasil tree or the sun actually being Apollo's chariot. I am looking for these sorts of things because there are a lot of passages in the Bible that are very accurate, even about things no one could have possibly known in ancient times. I think it is Job 26:7, for instance, that says God "hangs the earth on nothing". The first time I heard that it blew my mind because I take it to mean that the earth is something that is free floating and not supported by anything else, like a planet floating in space. How could someone know that back then? Also, the Bible clearly states that the sun and the moon are nothing special to be worshipped, only things that God made and placed in the sky. This was during a time when many other cultures believed the exact opposite and did worship the sun and moon. The Israelite culture was very different from the other cultures around it and I think there's something to that.
ReplyDeleteFinally, I like Pascal's Wager, which I believe is more thoughtful than people give it credit for. Not because it will help anyone to believe, only because I think it's a valid argument for why I believe. There are very smart people who are atheists and very smart people who are Christians and you can listen to and read arguments on both sides and see where each side has valid points and each side has flaws. Even if you think both arguments are equal I don't see a down side to being a Christian. If Christianity turns out to be false, then nothing matters anyway and who cares? We will all just fade into the darkness of nonexistence. But if it is true, the payoff is pretty big. What I think, and I believe Chesterton said something along these lines, is that it's okay to be a believer but still be free to doubt your faith. An atheist, on the other hand, needs to be constantly trying to prove a negative and is afraid of allowing "a divine foot in the door" as Richard Lewontin said. I don't have a problem with admitting I don't know something or that sure, some part of the Bible sounds a little strange. So what? What do the atheists have to offer? I do have a problem with someone like Richard Dawkins, who will go to apparently any length in refusing to consider the possibility of a divine being to the point of saying that maybe it was aliens that seeded the earth with life, but of course the aliens themselves evolved through some sort of Darwinian method.
And as for agnosticism, apoth, of course it's fair to say that you have honest doubts about both sides and are really not sure which one is true, but if you never decide one way or the other a decision will be made for you. I don't say that as some sort of scare tactic, like I'm thumping the Bible in your face and threatening you with eternal damnation, I'm just saying. For example, take all of those people who were supposedly undecided the day before the election last fall. If those people were telling the truth about their opinions, I have a feeling none of them voted the next day, probably because they still didn't have their minds made up for whatever reason. Well, Obama still got elected and he's still our president right now. If Obama is not really that bad, then all those silly conservatives got worked up over nothing. But if he really is that bad...well I think we're seeing the results of that right now.
ReplyDeleteAlso, Foo, since you brought up the parent analogy, I have felt my faith strengthened since having children. I feel a desire to shelter them from all the bad things in life that I know are out there, but at the same time I know that if they never experience them they will not know how to deal with it. All I can do is try to teach them. The alternative would be to try and keep them at home their entire lives, and then what sorts of people would they be? If we are made in God's image, then maybe as parents we are experiencing something similar to what God feels with us? We get upset when bad things happen to our children, or when they fight with their brothers or cousins, but at the end of the day they are going to all have to live their own lives and make their own choices and we have to let them do that.
I can go a little deeper if anyone wants me to, but that is the foundation of my faith, so to speak.
I know I already put a lot down, but since we are talking about religious things here I wanted to share something I read today. Who does this make you think of:
ReplyDelete"It was reported to Joab, 'The king is weeping. He's mourning over Absalom.' That day's victory was turned into mourning for all the troops because on that day the troops heard, 'The king is grieving over his son.' So they returned to the city quietly that day like people come in when they are humiliated after fleeing in battle. But the king hid his face and cried out at the top of his voice, 'My son Absalom! Absalom, my son!'
Then Joab went into the house to the king and said, 'Today you have shamed all your soldiers - those who rescued your life and the lives of your sons and daughters, your wives, and your concubines. You love your enemies and hate those who love you! Today you have made it clear that the commanders and soldiers mean nothing to you. In fact, today I know that if Absalom were alive and all of us were dead, it would be fine with you!
'Now get up! Go out and encourage your soldiers, for I swear by the Lord that if you don't go out, not a man will remain with you tonight. This will be worse for you than all the trouble that has come to you from your youth until now!"
--2 Samuel 19:1-7