How vs. Why

… or Why “Why?”? or Got Meaning? You can probably guess why I chose the first one. Sometimes I get caught up in my own attempts at cleverness but this time I decided to err on the side of clarity or at least I hope it becomes clear. This post follows up on some of the ideas explored in another post called “Science is Lost”.

One of my favorite comedians is Billy Connolly. Recently, I went on a Billy Connolly bender watching almost every video I could find of his from Google Video. In one of them called Shrink Rap, he is interviewed by his wife who is a shrink. He says people need to forget about the “why” and just face up to the reality of the “how”. The overwhelming flood of scientific evidence apparently points to our accidental meaningless existence on an insignificant planet. This is where I beg to differ. Billy Connolly, you’re a funny man and a pretty decent banjo player but I take issue with your logic.

“Why” is typically more important than “how”. For example: “Why did you go to university?” Employability? Self improvement? Your parents made you? Need to please? As opposed to, “How did you go to university?” Student Loan? Rich Parents? Drove your car? Rode your bike? The second set of answers are exceeding more mundane than the first ones and the implications of each. Try this thought exercise yourself and you will see that for most things the “why” is much more interesting than the “how”.

Why is “why” important? Or to phrase it differently, why do we seek meaning? Movies that have no meaning attached to them come across as flat and dull no matter how many bullets, bombs and babes there are. Why? Apparently we need some sort of emotional connection to make it impactful to us. Why?

Why do humans seek meaning and purpose? I suppose even Dawkins derives a sense of purpose from his mission to rid the world of the superstitions of fairies and the Easter Bunny. He does his level best to convince us that our lives are completely pointless apart from the pursuit of scientific discovery. We are here as a result of a series of fortunate accidents and now we need to find out what those fortunate accidents were in order to understand the universe and our place in it. That is the meaning of life. Apart from that, replicate and die.

What evolutionary advantage is gained from meaning that it should be so ubiquitous in an intelligent species?

Here is another set of “whys” to think about. Why is the earth so suited for life? Distance from the sun, tilt of the earth, protective atmosphere, good size lunar object, etc. are all in the perfect range to favor life on our planet. So far, we are not aware of life appearing anywhere else. The near infinite nature of the universe promises to spawn life on some other planet if only by virtue of the odds favoring it, provided that life spontaneously sprouted on earth, it is bound to happen somewhere else in the universe. What if life did not spontaneously happen on earth, but was helped along a little?

Some people would attribute the perfect suitability for life on earth to the happenstance of multiple universes, maybe even infinite alternate universes or near infinite. These people wouldn’t accept a god because of lack of proof, but would propose as alternative evidence, potential multiple universes to explain away the “why”. Why? “I don’t know, it’s just coincidence.”

So, I love you Billy Connolly, but I take issue with you and anyone else that says that “how” overrides “why”. “Why” is usually the most important question. If you answer that first, the “how” can become meaningful, but without “why”, “how” is just another meaningless screenplay.

Renew your mind

I like thinking. I like evaluating what people have to say and possibly updating my point of view if the information is profitable. I think most people are at least a bit like me in that they want to feel like they are staying on top of current events in the world, especially in their area of interest, be that sport or finance or science, etc.

It is probably no secret to people that read this blog (all three of you, your cheques are in the post) that I seem to be stuck on the subject of the validity of the God/no god, science v religion v philosophy ball of wax and trust me, I’m tired of it too. That’s why I have to write it all down, so I can think about something else for a while.

I used to work with a friend that said, and I paraphrase, “I believe in science, so my beliefs are constantly being updated with the latest science journals. You believe in the Bible, so your beliefs are stagnant and out dated.” I have heard similar sentiments many times since.

I pity the person whose perspective never changes. This is part of the reason why I think many Christians have lost the plot. They think that because God never changes that he is exactly the way he is described in the Old Testament or the New Testament or whatever way they may have experienced him before is the way he is always experienced. It turns out that those descriptions of God are just talking about an aspect of God, not his whole person. God can not be contained or fathomed in our wildest imaginations, much less be contained to a two page character sketch as some are inclined to do. They are stuck on one aspect of God and are satisfied with the part of God they think they understand.

Romans 12:2 says: Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. Renewing is a continual process. If you are not continuing to renew your mind and continually searching for answers you are not doing what the Bible instructs. A while ago, perhaps due to the advent of the scientific age, there were some theologians that said “If we can just put everything that the Bible has to offer into a series of lists and tables, we will distill all of the Biblical information and have all the answers.” This method is called Systematic Theology. The problem with it is that it reduces the study of the Bible and one’s relationship with God to an academic exercise. The main problem with this is that it totally discounts the idea of Spirit lead revelation. If you have all the answers given to you in a table, there is no need to pray about a passage in the Bible to ask God to reveal what it means. The Bible is a multi layered book with the potential to deliver new insights when combined with a believer’s life experience or particular state of mind or however God wants to reveal to you. God wants to be experienced, not just studied.

Do I change my mind about what I believe? Everyday, if I’m doing what I should be.

A window into the soul of plasticpatrick

My wife read my second to last post and told me it sounded arrogant and callous.

Read it here if you like: http://plasticpatrick.wordpress.com/2009/04/29/yes-you-can-be-a-moral-god%E2%80%A6-but-why-bother/#comments I don’t mean to be pouring salt in the wound of someone already in pain, this is just the way that I see the world as a result of my experiences.

When I was six, my brother, who was seven, was diagnosed with leukemia. Six years later he died. Now, having a sibling die is not the end of the world, but it is a very sobering experience. It made me evaluate the things that were important to me and emphasized the brevity of life. It made me an older person in my head, if you know what I mean. I never squandered years of my life going to bars and partying and crap like that because I couldn’t see any value in it, not for this life or the next.

I grew up literally in a religious institution. Many people were praying for my brother that he would get well, but he died anyway. I knew of other people that had experienced seemingly miraculous recoveries, so that was what I was expecting. I didn’t understand why God would take my brother, but heal other people. For many years I was disillusioned with God. I never fully rejected him, because I still recognized he was still there. I also sort of realized that I have to play by his rules because it is his world after all. I felt like a dog on a leash. So for a while I begrudgingly half heartedly followed God. Fundamentally, I resented the idea that if I didn’t choose to love God he would send me to hell. What if I don’t want to love God? I have a choice to love other people or not based on personal compatibility or whatever but there is never the option that I will face some sort of punishment if I choose not to love some other person. Freewill is supposedly the defining characteristic of Christianity. This is a bit like me holding a gun to someone’s head and telling them to give me a hug. “I said hug me like you mean it! Come on, hug me cause you want to!” Of course they choose to hug me, but only so I don’t shoot them. The point is this is not a real choice.

This is where I was at when I was met with a series of personal challenges that threatened to take away the only thing I really cared about. I had to throw myself at the mercy of God because I was out of options. I had to jump without knowing where I would land. I made a series of terrible decisions by most people’s standards. I shut down a successful business and gave away all the assets. I moved to a place I had never been before without enough money. I didn’t even have a job in the bag, I only had a few prospects. The job I ended up getting, came with a company vehicle, so I had transport and a few months later my wife was given a car as a signing bonus.

Here I am a few years later. I live in a nice house with my beautiful family, all thanks to my brilliant planning? No. God takes care of me because he loves me. He wants what’s best for me and I am content with whatever he sees fit to do with me. Wealth? Fine. Poverty? Great. Health? Lovely. Disease? Why not? Whatever God has dealt me in the past few years I have been better off because of, so he can do with me what he likes.

Kudos to Gnorthern Gnome

This is not my own work. I found this comment on http://unreasonablefaith.com/2008/06/03/irrefutable-proof-that-baal-exists/ in the comment stream.

@ An agnostic: A well reasoned, warm approach towards someone with faith in God from someone without it. Many atheists could learn a thing or two from agnostics like yourself, who are often the most open minded.What I would throw out there though is that scientific THEORY need not be based in SCIENTIFIC evidence and fact; rather often it is based upon HUMAN perception and logic both of which can be flawed.Let me explain. The obvious argument is “flat-earthism” a scientific theory that gained dominance for some absurd reason during the Mid point of Christianity up until early “modern” times. The theory was based nicely on human perception, that the horizon was flat and so therefore must the world be (also illustrating human logic) and a series of misinformed calculations that showed mathematical support. Of course in modern times both the human perception and the human logic (which helped lead to flaws in the mathematical evidence) are instantly shown to be wrong. That doesn’t mean, however, that human perception/logic is now flawless.Of course I am not trying to debunk evolution using flat-earth theory. I also realise this argument has been put forward time and time again. So how about a new one: gravity. We accept gravity as fact although it is still theoretical as an explanation for phenomenon found in our Universe. It is also based off human perception (things fall towards larger things) and logic (this means they are being attracted, we understand magnetism, it must be a similar “force” which exhibits similar behaviour) and of course we have our mathematical models. The problem with maths is it is more often than not used to prove a commonly held belief or disprove a commonly disputed belief so is open to human error – the maths will be flawless but a key component may be ignored by humans wanting to accept general consensus. You just have to look at what happens when someone refuses to conform (*cough*General Relativity – Einstein*cough*) to see how deep the problem lies. In reality the facts of gravity are little known, there is little beyond superficial evidence to suggest it is correct and just as flat-earth math models were used in cartography to astoundingly accurate degrees so it could just be fluke that we can use gravitational models to help with other real-life situations (such as space craft trajectories).In a similar sense you can easily see human perception playing a large role in the theory of evolution. Yes, we have some very nice groundings in genetical FACT now and the work of selective breeding does show some very good evidence yet at the same time we find carbon-dating and other radio-isotope dating giving competing answers (wildly competing too), supposedly scientific experiments that refute evidence that doesn’t support their evolutionary theory despite it being the majority (I refer to instances in australia where archeologists re-dated bones of large marsupials – extinct obviously – nearly forty times until they struck upon one which placed the bones within the perceived/expected timeframe; that’s a 1-in-40 result that was accepted as the outcome despite all scientific convention to the contrary just because it would have played havoc with a number of australian evolutionary timelines) and a general feeling that “evolution is FACT” when in reality it is simply a very nice, well argued theory (such as gravity) that human perceive to be logically true. Unfortunately as I have hopefully shown human perception and logical deduction is not the same as science and should never be construed as such.A little off-topic perhaps and so now to invalidate everything I’ve said to those that follow the religion (or faith-based living structure if you prefer) of atheism I will conclude that I am a Christian albeit one that doesn’t follow conventional Christianity. I’ll leave that one up to your own imaginations

Well said Gnorthern Gnome.

Yes, you can be a moral God… but why bother?

If God is the God of the Old Testament and ordered genocide then God is not a nice guy, therefore God does not exist. If God exists doesn’t he hear all the children in the world crying out to him that are slowly dying of hunger? Therefore God does not exist. If God is moral, loving, compassionate or whatever then why are their so many crappy things going on in the world? Why are their wars and rape and bank fraud and wire tapping? Why are there tsunamis and earthquakes and skin cancer? Therefore God does not exist.

Why would God have to be moral to be God?

When I was a child I used to set up these little plastic figurines and shoot them with my BB gun. Now, if I somehow could have magically animated those bits of plastic to make target practice more interesting, maybe I would have. Maybe that’s why God created the whole shebang just to stick us on a collective microscope slide, dropping tincture on us to observe as our organs slowly grind to a halt. If the world has design, does the designer have to be a nice guy?

When I was a little older I was in shop class. I was a little bit lucky because I managed to skip Shop 1 which was doing everything with hand tools and sand paper and useless crap like that. In Shop 2 we were allowed to use power tools and we would make wooden knives on the sanders and shoot each other with the nail guns. In shop I built a chair from scratch. The school provided the wood, but when I was done I owned the chair. I didn’t actually make the wood, it grew in a tree, but I fashioned it and assembled it into a chair, so by virtue of my labor, I owned the chair. I actually changed the design a bit because I made a rocking chair for my Mom, so it became my Mom’s chair. I screwed up the angle though, so when you sit in it you always feel like you’re falling out, which is a particularly fatal flaw for a rocking chair. Anyhow, despite the inadequacies of my design I owned the chair because I made it and I think my Mom still has it, not because it’s a brilliant chair, but because I made it.

Here’s where you may have to suspend your disbelief for a minute, depending on your paradigm. So if God or the Invisible Flying Spaghetti Monster or Zeus really did create the Earth, the universe and all that’s held within, then wouldn’t it stand to reason that he would “own” it? If he owns it, can’t he do what he likes with it? For that matter, if he created all matter, then even my body is his. The only thing that I can claim as strictly my own is my mind or whatever I have that is not dependent on my body for survival, if anything. But I still think God should at least act in a moral way. If I was God I would just create the universe in such a way that whatever my natural bent is would be considered right, and that’s exactly what he did. He made the rules.

In our current culture we have adopted a general code of conduct of do no harm. More specifically, do no harm to other human beings. We seem to be extending that philosophy to animals, yet we still farm and slaughter millions of animals every year, that doesn’t seem like a nice thing to do. Right now, there is no law endorsing assisted suicide for terminally ill people or people that just don’t want to live anymore, but it seems quite probable that one day this will be a regular occurrence. In the not too distant past, people with disabilities were killed because they were not considered useful. Today we look on that as shameful. The point being that our morals are on a shifting scale. The concept of do no harm to others works well in our modern, secure, egalitarian society but what would that mean if we lived in a tribal society where there was a shortage of food and more people than the amount of available land. People in our tribe might kill some people of the neighboring tribe and eat them because this creates less demand for the land and a meal for someone in our tribe. In this context it would be do no harm to people in our tribe, but people outside the tribe are fair game.

It seems to me a bit illogical that we should judge God by our movable scale, as if God should accommodate us, not the other way around.

So what about the genocide in the Old Testament when the Israelites were conquering the promised land? That’s indefensible, surely? Well I don’t know, but if, by virtue of creating it from nothing, God actually owns the whole world, including our bodies, he calls the shots and determines when to pull the plug. Would it have been more palatable if God had just wiped out the inhabitants of the land with a plague and not make the Israelites get their hands dirty? According to the Bible, God himself used the enemies of Israel to straighten them out by occasionally invading their land and oppressing them in the process killing several thousand people, so the Israelites were not immune to judgment by the sword.

One of my favorite lines that some smokers use to defend their habit is, “statistically speaking 100% of non-smokers die”. The flip side of that is “if you live long enough, smoking will kill you”. The point is everyone dies. If we look at this from the perspective of a God that created time and likely exists in and outside of time, the time we spend on earth will be approximately the same whether we were here for 1 minute or 100 years. It’s like being in an examination and we don’t know when the bell will ring, but we will only be tested on what we were able to finish. That’s a crude analogy but give it the benefit of the doubt if you don’t mind.

I know this suspension of disbelief is a difficult exercise for someone reading it of another paradigm. You can put your realism glasses back on now. To be sure, I don’t have a complete answer for the problems of pain in the world, but I do know that the periods of pain in my own life have been times of personal growth and formation of my character. The slack times I often question if God really knows what he is doing and selectively forget the things he has done for me in the past. I understand that some people would explain that away as fluke, but that’s a topic for a different post.

If you want to find out more about the subject of pain in the world, read the book of Job. Job and his friends deliberate almost endlessly (sort of like bloggers). In the end God shows up, not to give Job and his posse answers but basically says “who are you to question me?” I know that sounds like an incredibly arrogant thing to say, but he is after all, the Creator of the Universe.

So I guess if he wanted to, he could act morally, but in the end, when you’re God, you make the rules and why would he bother playing by our rules?

In the end, I’m not here to defend God. He is certainly able to defend himself when he sees fit, I’m just presenting my personal convictions and the conclusions that I have come to.

Just having a laugh

Have you ever noticed, the smaller the crowd that subscribes to a given brand of humor the more “sophisticated” that brand of humor is? If you don’t get the humor then you’re just not smart enough or well versed enough. For example an independent art movie with a high brow sense of humor won’t attract the kind of box office success as a slapstick buddy comedy or a romantic comedy.

I like to take that one step further, by doing things strictly for my own amusement and none other. To me, this is the highest form of humor, done for the purest reasons, pure humor reasons, not altruism. This means that I am either exercising the highest form of humor or perhaps borderline insane as that is another group of people that do things entirely for their own amusement. Autistic people do things for their own amusement as well and loads of them are geniuses.

Cats like to play with mice before they kill them and killer whales like to play with seals as they kill them. That’s a bit like me, but my humor generally doesn’t involve anyone’s death.

Why I am Not a Religionist

It seems to be the common view of Atheists that people that participate in religions do so out of fear of the alternative. I would generally agree with that. Many people have this view that religions promote the idea that if you aren’t good enough or give enough or pray enough or read your Bible enough, that God is going to drop the hammer. It is no wonder that Atheists think that all religions are money grabbing, power hungry, top heavy, fear mongers. There are nearly no end of people that think of God as a lucky charm or a last chance Santa who may see fit to solve their current emergency if they just pray enough or have enough faith or post some prayer response in 5 newspapers or whatever else.

I don’t have enough personal experience with people from alternative religious traditions, particularly from the East such as Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism, Shintoism, Zoroastrianism, etcetera, to make any particular judgment call, so this is not about any of them.

That said, many people I have met do have a belief in God, and it is often informed by the media, peers, and society in general. Many people that I have met are involved in organized religion for the “fire insurance”. Many people have a view that they are stacking up brownie points with God and that God will be happy with them if they do more of the right things and less of the bad things.

In many ways religion is the problem, not the solution as it often makes the stereotypes worse instead of attempted to correct the course.

Generally speaking, I don’t quote from the Bible much in this blog or refer to it, as the audience may not consider it to be viable. However, despite what you may think of the Bible’s conclusions, it is at least as verifiable and historically accurate as a work of a similar time, such as Plato’s Republic and nobody doubts that the version of the gospels or Plato’s Republic is basically what the authors intended to write down.

In the gospels, the group that received the most grief from Jesus was the Pharisees. The Pharisees, along with the priests, were the religious leaders of the day. Today’s equivalent to the pastors, priests, bishops, etcetera. Their problem was that they thought they had it all figured out. They followed all the laws flawlessly, but it didn’t trickle down to their hearts. The gospel message in a nutshell, according to Jesus, is “love God, love people”. That says nothing about rules, regulations, checklists or guilt or any of the things modern religion has become about.

Ephesians 2:8-10 says:

2:8 For by grace you are saved through faith,  and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God; 2:9 it is not from works, so that no one can boast. 2:10 For we are his workmanship, having been created in Christ Jesus for good works that God prepared beforehand so we may do them. 

http://net.bible.org/bible.php?book=Eph&chapter=2#n23

This makes it clear – I am not able to save myself through good works. If I’m doing my job properly, I will perform good works because I am created to do so, not because God is going to punish me if I don’t.

I do participate in a religion in a sense in that I attend a local church where I meet with people who have similar beliefs and we can share our experiences and learn from each other. However, my relationship with God is far more important than my religion. To me, religion is how people can relate about God to each other, but God doesn’t need religion to relate to us.

I hope this clears up some misconceptions. Your comments are welcome.

Atheist With a Capital A

There have been many that have called my attention to the fact that Atheism is a statement of non-belief, rather than a statement of belief and is therefore not a proper noun. It is merely a category, not the name of an organized group that would warrant a capitalization. It is like capitalizing Car instead of Oldsmobile. It is not a religion in itself and thus is not properly capitalized. To capitalize Atheism would be on par with capitalizing Theism, which is in no way correct because there is no Church of Theism.

The reason I capitalize Atheism is because I interpret it as a religion. Granted, there are Atheists and atheists, the former being proud of who they are and are doing their level best to spread the good word. The latter are just people who don’t think there is a god or gods but don’t see the need to wear the T-shirt. They may not be solidly convinced either way, but they think and act as if there is no god.

I equate Atheism with a religion because it looks like any other religion. Not every religion has a god. Some merely believe in an energy source. Some religions are actually compatible with Atheism in that they don’t claim a god per se. Here is the link to the Wikipedia article on religion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion

Here is the first paragraph:

A religion is an organized approach to human spirituality which usually encompasses a set of narratives, symbols, beliefs and practices, often with a supernatural or transcendent quality, that give meaning to the practitioner’s experiences of life through reference to a higher power or truth.^[1] It may be expressed through prayer, ritual, meditation, music and art, among other things. It may focus on specific supernatural, metaphysical, and moral claims about reality (the cosmos, and human nature) which may yield a set of religious laws, ethics, and a particular lifestyle. Religion also encompasses ancestral or cultural traditions, writings, history, and mythology, as well as personal faith and religious experience.

Atheism ticks enough boxes for me to call it a religion. It is organized (without a church structure), it defines its view of spirituality (there is none), it has a common narrative, beliefs, practices, apparently gives meaning to practitioner’s lives and it references science as its source of truth. It often focuses on moral claims about reality(the cosmos and human nature) which yields a set of ethics and a particular lifestyle. It also encompasses writings, history, and mythology (as provided by science ie fossil record, etcetera), as well as personal faith (that there is no god, that the universe started by itself, that there are no supernatural events). You don’t have to go to many different blogs with active Atheists to pick up on the common jargon, and if you don’t mind me asking why “flying spaghetti monster”? I know the point is that it’s supposed to sound ridiculous, but when everyone says it, it makes it pretty obvious everyone is singing from the same hymn sheet. It doesn’t give much credence to the supposed ‘free thought’ of the movement.

I don’t use Wikipedia as my sole source of information, but it is handy enough and objective for the sake of this post. The Wikipedia article on religion ends with a critique on the idea of religion, that the term “religion” maybe an entirely unfortunate misnomer. The suggestion is to lump in anything previously defined as religion the category of an ideology. I think that would be a reasonable way to go, particularly as I don’t see myself as being that “religious”, but my view of God definitely impacts on my personal ideology.

Atheist Smackdown

Score! I’ve been reviewed! I was once driving through Nevada when I saw a billboard promoting a place called Battle Mountain. It said something to the effect of : Battle Mountain voted The Armpit of America. We didn’t know you were even looking!

It was a slow news day in the office of this godless blogger so he picked my article to give a formulaic rebuke to all my nonsense arguments.

http://atheism.about.com/b/2009/03/24/plastic-patrick-understands-atheists.htm

This guy was so incensed by one of my previous posts, he wrote his own in rebuttal just to prove what an ignoramus I am. Little old me, plasticpatrick. Did I claim to be someone? Did I say I have letters behind my name? I’m just some guy with a computer and a wire plugged into the wall. I keep my ear to the ground a bit, but I don’t claim to know all, perceive all or read scientific journals by the gigabyte.

This blog is just about how the world makes sense to me. You don’t have to agree with me. I’m not even trying to persuade anyone of anything. I’m just trying to stir the marbles in your head a bit.

In the post which this gentleman is referring to, you can find it here:

http://plasticpatrick.wordpress.com/2009/03/03/yes-you-can-be-a-moral-atheist-but-why-bother/ , I made a passing reference that morality comes from religion. I realize that there is a rational argument for how we could have morals without religion or why we should reject the morals of religion or whatever, but the fact remains that Atheism is a relatively modern phenomenon and before that basically everyone would have believed in some religion or another. Today we have a view of morality as being a fluid dynamic, but it had to come from somewhere. There aren’t any people that I am aware of that were raised in an isolated chamber with no contact with the outside world so they could claim that their morality in no way came from religion. Our morals likely come from people around us as we are social beings, it is natural for us to seek approval from the group that surrounds us, and thus we adopt their morals, especially as children. I am not saying that someone has to be religious to be moral, but that the “rough draft” for morals, ultimately came from the world religions, not exclusively my religion.

 

Quick Nuked Brownies

This recipe is not original, but it is very tasty. Don’t feed it to your Grandmother if she has a heart problem or high cholesterol. This recipe is actually quicker to make than it would be to go to the Quik-E-Mart, or what have you, to get a chocolate fix. You can have, in your hands, a bowl of mid quality chocolate brownies in less than 7 minutes. It’s also pretty easy to memorize because everything is half a cup and it is a simple wash up with only ½ cup measuring cup, 1 teaspoon, two beaters and a bowl, plus a spoon or two if you’re sharing.

½ cup flour

1 cup sugar (2 – ½ cups)

½ cup cocoa

½ cup margarine or butter (don’t substitute oil or it will be really greasy)

3 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

I usually just nuke it in the bowl. I prefer to half cook it, then eat it by scooping cooked bits and dipping it in hot batter. I know it sounds a bit revolting, but it’s the only way to have it once you try it. I nuke it for 4 minutes, which might be too much if you have a powerful microwave.

Alternatively, you can cook them like proper brownies by pouring them into a greased pan and putting them in the oven for about 20-25 minutes on 175degC or so.