This afternoon I experienced my first earthquake. Being a first-timer, it took a few seconds to realize what was happening. Had I lived at a different time in a different place, I might have attributed the tremor to an angry god shaking the planet like a snow globe out of frustration for the sins of humanity. Fortunately, however, I had a much more plausible explanation at my disposal: an earthquake caused by the spontaneous shifting of the Earth’s tectonic plates.
But scientific explanations such as these have only recently begun to hold any sway among the general population. Not long ago, the “snow globe” explanation would have been more than sufficient for even the most enlightened of our species. And the remnants of this human tendency still permeate virtually every thought discipline, including science. So strong is our allegiance the Sunday school notion of a “higher power”, that we even look for divine agency as a means of understanding that for which science has already provided us a sound explanation.
As a result, the concepts of “meaning” and “purpose” have become so saturated with theistic dogma that they’re almost void of any objective meaning. When one asks, what his or her purpose is, in reality what they’re asking is, “what function do I serve in the grand design of the almighty?” When one asks the proverbial “why”, as in “why am I here,” that person is really asking, what was the almighty’s motivation for bringing me into existence?
This pathological inability to conceive of meaning outside the context of divine agency infests our lexicon and clouds the search for answers to much more meaningful questions. For example, many prominent physicists have noted that the physical laws governing the universe appear fine-tuned to support life. In other words, if just one of the fundamental constants were to be perturbed even slightly, life as we know it would be impossible. Lay people interpret these musings as evidence of a divine adjuster, who calculatingly tuned the constants to their current values so that life could eventually evolve. These same people believe that to deny the existence of the divine adjuster is to claim that life and the universe just came about by “accident”.
The problem is that this presupposes the existence of a divine agent to whom this accident can be attributed, either by virtue of some blunder or through negligent inaction. The true scientist recognizes that this dichotomy is a false one. Beyond the divine adjustment scenario and divine accident scenario there exists a third possibility. The universe just is. No adjustments, accidents or intelligent designers need be invoked. As improbable as our current universe might be (and there may be other universes), this is the outcome that prevailed in this particular case.
Consider the following thought experiment. Suppose you took 100 decks of playing cards and numbered the decks so that each card contains a unique tag consisting of a number, a suit, and a deck number. Then suppose you shuffled all 5200 cards and dealt them out making sure to record the precise sequence of cards as each one gets drawn. Some people might look at this sequence and say, “That’s incredible that against such astronomical odds, that particular sequence was dealt. Every human being on the planet could spend the next decade continuously performing this same exercise and this particular sequence would likely never be duplicated. There must have been some divine agent pulling for that sequence.” But this is clearly the wrong way to look at it. Once that sequence is dealt once, any attempt at quantifying its probability retroactively is meaningless. You’re essentially setting up the problem backwards.
For me, there is a great irony hidden within this discussion. Science (and the abstract reasoning it requires) is what makes us human and distinguishes us from the rest of the animal kingdom, more so than any other trait (many mammals can’t count beyond the number 2, which is why a mother cheetah roaming the Serengeti can sometimes lose a cub to a predator and not even notice). Yet, at the same time, our need to project consciousness onto every theoretical surface we encounter is a major force that prevents us from realizing our full scientific potential.
Corollary 1
Perhaps it was this thinking that gave rise, to the theory of biocentrism, a new concept that has gained some traction within scientific circles. According to the theory, space and time are mere tools used by the conscious mind to process the sensory information it receives from the environment. New age thinkers like Deepak Chopra, take this idea to the extreme and say that nothing exists until it is acknowledged and manifested within the consciousness of a living being. At the other end of the spectrum, the American philosopher Daniel Dennett would argue that there is no such thing as consciousness and that which we perceive as consciousness is merely the aggregate of electrochemical processes taking place within the brain.
To an extent both things are true. Obviously things exist whether one's mind is aware of them or not. However, consciousness adds another dimension to that existence. For example, the British biologist, Richard Dawkins argues that colours, as we experience them, are merely labels manufactured within the brain used to recognize and distinguish between the various wavelengths of light. As a result, the physiological formulae our brains use to recognize the colour blue, may be different for each person and therefore every person may experience the colour blue differently. But the wavelengths that each of those colours describe are fixed and they exist regardless of whether that light is being viewed.
Corollary 2
Getting back to the bigger picture, this notion that our existence has no meaning if we’re not serving some function in the grand design of a higher power, represents a destructive pathology within the human psyche that needs to be exorcized. Personally, I find it liberating to know that I’m not a mere cog among billions within some deity’s cosmic science experiment. Rather, my life has value in and of itself, despite the absence of a divine tinkerer. What could be more meaningful than that?
Real talk. People need to stop attributing everything to a higher power. The worst example of this is those people who say their child/husband/etc died because it was God's will. I know a woman who lost her husband in a horrible car crash and said something along those lines. I don't want to disrespect her grief, but I think any deity that deems killing a man in a fiery car crash part of his plan fucked in the head. Why not just worship the devil if you think that way?
You've written passionately many times on your objection against organized religion (and maybe religion in general). I'm curious to know why that it is. Has it affected you deeply in some way in the past?
I really want to understand why so many intelligent/rational thinkers in the western world so strongly oppose it.
Religion tells us that most people want to attribute their existence to a higher agent. To me, that means an opportunity to seize power and be that agent. Do you not see the benefit in conditioning little people to think the way you want them to think?
so did u take "philosophy of mind| or |persons, minds, and bodies" at u of t? (re "cog", seeing colours differently, dennett)
u would've aced either.
@Maya: Thx. Hope you enjoyed the article. I never took philosophy of mind though I've always been really fascinated by it. I did take a philosophy of Science course in 1st year though. We read a lot of Popper but I don't remember much.
@John: This article isn't really about religion. I think religious people often make the mistake of conflating matter-of-fact-ness with passion. If you look at my word choice. I'm not very passionate about my disdain for religion at all. Rather I'm just being frank which religious people aren't used to hearing due to the priveleged status that religion has historically been afforded, I've never had any negative experience with religion. In fact, I think religion is an important, positive, part of life for many people that are very close to me, and I totally respect that.
I have a question for you though. It's clear that you have a soft spot for irrational faith, whether or not you choose to self-identify as a religious person. You always seem to come up with a defense for religion in response to all my articles. But I notice that your defenses often ridicule and belittle the intelligence of religious people. Rather than defend the virtue of religion itself, you end up defending religion as a tool for the control and pacification of the ignorant. I'm curious... Is that just because this is the best you can come up with, or are you trully just that cynical and dismissive of faith on its merits?
I'm not the ideal candidate for defending religion, but I'm making the attempt because no one else is. I like balanced discussions.
"defending religion as a tool for the control and pacification of the ignorant. Is that just because this is the best you can come up with, or are you trully just that cynical and dismissive of faith on its merits?"
You're correct on both accounts. Because I haven't studied any of the world religions, the first and foremost thing I appreciate about it is it's ability to control. I've always valued control (part of the reason I went into engineering), but even more so nowadays because of operating my business. I often find myself asking, "why can't people just do things properly" which consequently leads me to thinking "I need to make people do EXACTLY what I need them to do. Which means I need to a) condition them to think in a certain way and b) alter their values so that they align with mine." Religion seems to have an answer to that. What did people like Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, Laozi, Buddha, (Mao, Hitler, JFK in the mix) etc... do to bring people together to care about something and then execute? Whatever it is they did, I need it. I need peopel to believe in what I believe, care about what I care about, then act to make it happen. I can't do everything myself.
I'm ignorant of the other virtues of religion. If they exist, maybe you can write about them?
"Purpose" and "meaning" are mechanisms to deal with uncertainty.
I'm don't like uncertainty. I remember 10 years ago, I would tell people, I wish someone handed me the perfect book that dictated my life. Then I can follow things word for word, without being burden by choices or the emotional roller coaster that comes with them. THere would be no surprises. I'd be comforted by the fact that everything would happen in an efficient and orderly manner with no corner cases unaccounted for.
It's been over 20 years, and I still can't find the perfect book that complies with my desires and aspirations. I've come to the conclusion that I'd get a faster ROI if I wrote my own book rather than searching for one. Until my book is complete, I'm going to have to deal with migraines of uncertainty.
When people speak of purpose and meaning, it means they've got their book. They've found an acceptable way to manage life's uncertainties. I envy those who are able to pick a book off the shelf. I applaud those who don't read at all, because they just don't care. But for me, because I'm cursed with the ability to read and an affinity for the unorthodox, I reluctantly take on the arduous task of writing.
Absolutely. And it also means that every coincidence doesn't have to be part of your 'God's plan' to be meaningful. The fact that it could just as easily have never happened, and may never happen again, gives interactions a lot of meaning for me.