Wednesday, November 7, 2007

The science of faith

I was chatting with an acquaintance recently, and our conversation wandered into the topic of Evolution. He thinks Evolution is all fake. Naturally his view of Evolution is entirely based on the fact that he has already accepted on faith that the Bible as absolute truth. Once your reality is based on faith, you can believe whatever you want to believe.

But I've found that many religious people are at least willing to attempt to debate on facts, because nobody wants to be seen as being irrational. (Never mind that they retreat deeper into faith if they start to lose the battle of facts.)

This individual wasn't even willing to debate me. The reasons he gave were reasons I've heard before, and reasons I'm hearing more and more lately...enough to think there is a real movement behind this.

The argument goes something like this:

"Look, people have been debating the existence of God and the meaning of life for thousands of years, and nobody has ever come up with a winning answer. How could I be smarter than all of them? I have accepted God on faith, and there is no use in thinking about it or debating it any further. You can show me any reason to doubt God's existence, and I can find someone on the other side who would counter your argument. Debating gets you nowhere. I'm going to focus on living my life and being happy."

Obviously there are holes in every part of his "just believe and be happy" argument. It assumes mankind has collectively learned nothing at all, it assumes that human beings are totally incapable of reasonable judgment, it assumes that happiness is a greater goal than truth, and it is a defeatist attitude in the face of an imaginary challenge of their own creation! It is a complete abandonment of reason. You could justify anything with that kind of logic.

And yet what this presents is a more difficult and vexing form of faith that what I usually encounter. Many people want to believe that their religion is reasonable and logical and can easily stand on the facts. They want to believe that we all live in the same reality and that reasonable people will come to the same conclusions when presented with the same evidence.

But this "believe and be happy" form of faith takes the shape of a conscious decision to see the world as they want to see it, to willfully believe whatever they want to believe, without any concern for seeking any absolute truth. If mankind has proven itself unable to discern what is real and what isn't, then everything must be faith, and we might as well just sit back and enjoy the ride.

It's like something right out of the movie "The Matrix", and yet this is real, and it's happening right now. Hundreds of millions of people are making a conscious choice for the blue pill.



Do I value truth over happiness? Yes...but I don't believe they are mutually exclusive. A life without magical thinking offers the freedom of the mind that is necessary to have an enriched and well examined life. I also don't believe that a blue-pill life leads to happiness. I know plenty of religious people who suffer terribly and are miserable people.

But I do sometimes wonder what it would be like to live in a bubble of blind faith...to be able to believe whatever I want to believe, and be absolutely certain that it was the truth. I would never even be aware that I had traded truth for fantasy. I would never know a red pill even existed.

But once you've seen the real world, it is most difficult to go back. And when I think about that, I wonder how I got "unplugged" in the first place. Why do a few of us escape the bubble of faith that traps so many?

How can the world be so full of religion, and yet I feel so sure that I have reached an awareness that most people have not? I don't consider myself as being any better than the believers. I've met religious people who are brilliant and wonderful people. So it is a puzzle to be an Atheist in a world full of religion. Atheists sensed that something wasn't right, and that there was more to the world that what we were told. We were skeptical and inquisitive, and we wouldn't stop digging until we found some answers. And what we discovered turns out to be vastly different than what most of humanity just accepts on faith because they aren't so inquisitive.

But why are the majority people people not inquisitive?




"You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it." -- Morpheus






Most people aren't inquisitive because most people have a lot invested in their chosen reality. And that is what makes atheists such an unpopular minority: We deny their reality. We are a much greater threat to their world than any other religion. Having multiple religions in this world only serves to reinforce their reality. The existence of Islam reinforces Christianity, and vice-versa. Worshipers look around the world and only see other worshipers. So they see no need to question their reality. The only question is who picked the right god.

But atheists deny the reality of what these religions have all collectively created. We are the weirdos. We are the glitch in the system that they want fixed. Every religion throughout history has had it's "enforcers" who have attacked and hunted us. We are the one group that everyone can agree to hate. Polls have shown that people would rather elect someone from another religion than an atheist.

In this country, "religious freedom" is interpreted to mean that you can believe in God any way you want...just so long as you still believe...just so long as you remain plugged-in to the system and admit that faith is all there is. I can't count the number of times I've heard religious apologists claim that even Atheism is an act of faith...that we are no different and we play by their rules.

And this brings me back to my blue-pill friend who just doesn't care about science, philosophy, or religion. To him, atheism is just one of many ways to view this reality. But no, he is very wrong. They are all very wrong. Something fundamental has changed, and even many atheists don't realize it. This is not the same philosophical debate that has been raging for thousands of years. This is something brand new. In very recent human history we have seen the enthusiastic and universal application of the scientific method, and this has given us our first true glimpse of the real world.

For the first time in history, we are developing the ability to see the raw data of this reality. It is only in the past 100 years that all of the pieces of biology, geology, chemistry, astronomy, physics, and psychology have come together into a coherent picture of the real world.

100 years ago, within the lifetime of many people living today, there was no concept of galaxies, no concept of continental drift, no DNA, no general relativity, no protons, no neutrons, no big bang, no understanding of evolutionary mechanisms, and no way to see the "code" that makes up reality. What science has delivered in the past century is nothing less than the physical reality that lies underneath our perceived reality. This is an absolutely brand new challenge to religion and it is the ultimate challenge to the inevitability of faith.

Atheism has teeth now. The Atheistic stance has changed from "Maybe the world could work without supernatural influence" to "Here is actually how the world actually does work without supernatural influence." It is a switch from inductive to deductive arguments based on our new-found ability to observe the physical reality of this world.

Religion is losing it's last foothold in reality and is being forced entirely into the realm of faith, and faith is losing it's legitimacy. In the past, faith was the act of believing in the absence of hard evidence. Today, faith is the act of believing in spite of hard evidence. The doorway to reality is finally open for all of us, and the only way to miss it is to willfully choose to look away. And this, of course, is exactly what most people will do.

If science becomes the tool that unplugs humanity from the false realities of religion, then science will eventually be attacked or be abandoned by large segments of the population. I can only hope it's not a majority of people. But even a rabid minority can cause catastrophes. The theory of Evolution will be the front line and the pivot in this battle. We can gracefully progress to the next stage of human society, or we can willfully close our eyes and slam ourselves back into another Dark Age. A significant percentage of the world's population, including my blue-pill friend, will absolutely prefer the latter.

I would no more push Atheism on someone than I'd want them to push Christianity on me. (And believe me, they do!) You can't force someone to take the red pill. But what I will advocate with utmost conviction is science. As a species, we are strong and we are many, but to survive we must move forward, and to move forward we must learn. We need the collective insight and wisdom to solve our own problems instead of waiting for the man in the sky with the white beard to save us.

It's not that I'm optimistic that science will find easy answers to all the problems that face our planet, but rather science will allow us to see our problems for what they are, and science will give us the best options for dealing with them. Science will give us the red pill we desperately need, and then the rest is up to us!

(To help support the advancement of science, please visit http://www.aaas.org/)

Saturday, November 3, 2007

A reason happens for everything



If you've never heard of Jacqueline Saburido before, then beware this video is a bit gruesome and a major downer...

http://www.glumbert.com/media/drunkdriving

And that video isn't anywhere near as gruesome as the full details of everything she's been through and continues to go through.

If you do a Google search on Jacqueline Saburido (Jaqui), you'll see there are multiple websites devoted to her and her story. She has been the focus of a major outpouring of sympathy and consideration. She has become a powerful figure in the campaign against drunk driving. When you see the videos of her and her story, you can't help but feel twisted up inside.

But why is it that nobody seems to notice, or care, or even remember that two other kids actually DIED in that car accident? Death is not a strong deterrent to drunk driving?

Everyone cares deeply for Jacqueline's father and feels sorry for what he's had to go through...but nobody even remotely cares for the parents of the other two kids who died. You have to dig deep in all the news stories to even find the names of those kids! They are almost totally forgotten.

The reason nobody notices the death of the two other kids is this: We all instinctively know that there are things worse than death. It is absolutely true, and we all know it, but when forced to confront that fact, most of us will deny it. This is exactly why the doctors brought her back to life even though they must have known it would be an abomination to do so, and would put her through an experience worse than letting her die. This is why laws that allow assisted suicides for terminally ill patients never pass. If nothing is worse than death, then why is euthanizing a suffering pet an acceptable practice? We allow more peace and dignity for our pets than for our own kind.

Jacqui is interesting because what she has been through is more horrifying to us than just dying in a car accident. And yet a majority of us refuse to honestly confront that kind of thinking. We can't bare the weight of these decisions upon us. We want easy and guilt-free answers to our biggest questions, and we will do anything to anybody to get them. If you let a suffering person die, people will call you a monster. If you prolong their suffering indefinitely by keeping them alive, people will call you a miracle worker.

It is highly ironic that the people who are most unwilling to accept death are religious people who believe that there is a better world after death. They hide behind catch phrases like "Everything happens for a reason" and "This was God's will". I get so infuriated with these philosophical lightweights. Maybe it was "God's will" for Jacqui to die that day, and the doctors disobeyed His will by bringing her back? Surely the doctors are not agents of God's will, for they become better at avoiding death every year, and the day will come when they cure aging and stop death altogether.

It is only an atheist doctor who could make a reasonable argument for giving a patient every opportunity to hang on to this life, if that is what the patient wants. But no, the rabid strain of "live at all costs" thinking actually comes from the religious individuals. And yet these same people believe that this life on Earth is infinitely insignificant compared to what awaits us beyond. If you believe in Heaven, then surely you realize that Jacqui would be enjoying Heaven all this time instead of enduring over 50 surgeries and agony of an intensity and duration that few people will ever suffer. Her parents could have grieved and moved on instead of being trapped in an ongoing ordeal that will last until the day they die...at which point Jaqui might wind up under institutional care!

But are we to believe there is a good reason for Jaqui to be denied Heaven only to be put through a living Hell? If everything happens for a reason, then what was the reason for death of the two other kids in this car accident? Nobody even remembers them. Their lives have had no impact on drunk-driving awareness at all.

Everything does NOT happen for a reason...rather...human beings are surprisingly capable of making a reason happen for everything. Jacqui has a horrific story to tell, and people have been able to make use of that in drunk-driving awareness campaigns. But Jacqui could have just as easily had the same thing happen to her at the hands of a sober driver who just lost control due to a flat tire. Then what would you do for Jaqui? Have her campaign for tire safety? Well, you could make Jacqui into an inspirational speaker who demonstrates how the human spirit can triumph over adversity. (And you quietly hide the fact that Jacqui does, in fact, suffer from depression and has had many bouts of wanting to die, and might have actually killed herself by now if she had fingers or the means to do so.)

There have been tens of thousands of women in Congo who were so violently raped that they've suffered permanent internal organ damage and can't lead normal lives. Do we suppose this happened for a reason too? Would you try and argue that the reason for their suffering was to draw attention to the horrible situation in the Congo? As if a death toll of 4 million people since 1996 has NOT conveyed that message? And if it hasn't, then what was the "reason" for the death of the 4 million? To make matters worse, there is such a cultural stigma against rape that most of these women keep it a secret to the day they die. They fade away, unnoticed by anyone, with all their suffering left unbalanced by any later positive outcome.

There is some validity to using a horrific experience to remind people that horrific experiences can happen. Yes, you can find meaning and purpose in that goal, but the purpose is not the reason for the experience!! A divinely inspired world would have no such experiences to begin with, and would need no such lesson...or at the very least would find some other way to teach that lesson than "by example". Surely an all-powerful being could educate us about the dangers of drunk driving without very SLOWLY burning a young woman alive while she is conscious and screaming in agony (as Jacqui was).

I don't want you to think I don't feel sorry for Jacqui. I feel more-than-sorry for her, I feel downright heartbroken. She haunts my thoughts. But now that she is past the worst parts of her ordeal, I am trying to be optimistic that she'll be able to find peace and meaning in her life. She seems to have an incredibly strong character. But will the rest of her life be worth everything she has had to endure and everything she will yet endure? That is an unknown, and at no point will the doctors allow her to make that call for herself.

She has paid an unbelievably high price in order to have these additional years of life, so she might as well try and make the best of them. But instead of raising awareness of drunk driving, maybe she could raise awareness of the hypocrisy and childish fantasy that muddies the waters of some of the most important decisions we'll ever make in our lives.