As with any blog with religion as even
a remote subject these things will happen. I will find myself feeling
redundant and uninteresting (actually, I managed to come to different
insights I’m proud to say), the random “friends” who’ve never
read or heard me say anything on the topic will be open to all sorts
of judgments and interpretations of where I’m coming from, and some
will wonder why I so actively seek to damage relationships. With that
in mind, there is now a reason only a select number of people can
read my shit on here anymore.
I’m amazed, if you will, at the level of detail involved in any given situation and how any single aspect of that situation can send a wave of influence in any direction. To me, it speaks to the idea of how, unstable, perhaps everything is. It’s not even in just the details of someone’s life that urges them towards a specific faith. It goes farther into how and why they choose to interpret those details. It calls into question what they are even able of perceiving or comprehending before presented with a new idea or situation.
It’s this instability that influences my view in my previous blog to be “resolved” to the idea that nothing will change. Now, on its face this seems contradictory. How can I think nothing will change when it all rests on an unstable foundation. The question though speaks again to the nuances. The fact of the matter is, whether everyone believed in magic sky daddies or not, it does not remove the deeper unchanged foundation of fear and uncertainty. Whether every environmental and human rights foundation were the richest companies or not, it wouldn’t stop people from feeling greed. If every great idea had a platform and served to make the lives of millions a monochrome better, it would not escape one person who had the desire, resolve, or influence to pollute if not destroy it.
The problem, to me, is at the individual level. The answer to why has many answers; uninformed, not caring, unable, scared, deluded. The sad fact that to some level we all suffer to some extent of all of these conditions. While marred within these hindrances, or plagues, we establish our institutions from which to draw insight and inspiration; churches, governments, social hierarchies in general. Our ideas about truth and justice are embedded within these frameworks. So maybe I can denote the problem in a clearer way, the absolution of the individual. This seems too incomplete and not speaking to the deeper issues.
We create the establishments for reasons, albeit many bad ones along with the good, but reasons nonetheless. Where did we draw the reasons before the institutions existed? My initial thought is that pool of uniformed and scared instinct. At the heart of existence, at least that we can reasonably surmise so far, we are driven to reproduce. This does not take hundreds of years of moral debate and theological philosophy, but if those things exist in any capacity that facilitates more reproduction, then they are considered beneficial. This, another reason to not be overly dismayed at the idea that things won’t change.
But not to lose focus. We absolve ourselves, behave in relatively sensible ways from a genetic point of view, and are beleaguered by the haunting facts of our nature and existence. Now this brings up an interesting conundrum. If, at our core, we want to reproduce and create this fantastic future for our offspring, why are so many pitted against science and the ideas that will help them better understand how to live? I have a hard time believing that many people genuinely don’t want be alive and this is just some dramatic cultural “secret” suicide pact. I also don’t really believe people genuinely want their offspring to suffer.
Here we come back to the individual. I don’t think people even remotely appreciate their impact on the world. And yes, I am guilty of it too. We are resolved to the idea that you can never really see how you are perceived in someone else’s head, and therefore behave as if we aren’t really being perceived. But what of insecurity and social stigma? Well, maybe these are not really about other peoples’ thoughts, but your fear and misunderstanding of those thoughts. As much as we absolve ourselves in institutions, it doesn’t erase the plagues. What plagues you is part of what you take your individual self to be, and maybe it’s even the greater extent of most people. How necessary an escape becomes then.
In that regard, science can come off cold and uncaring, which pragmatically it is. Fundamental constants and objective observational accounts have little regard for your happiness. Science is the pursuit of understanding the natural world. This father figure who has been killing you for at least 200,000 years over every mistake you make and with every phenomenon you don’t understand. Perhaps we have a hard grained inclination to fear treading on the knowledge base of this powerful realm we’ve been punished by for so long. An individual at this point needs to be able to feel like they have a decision. I can’t even make the statement that they have to make a decision, or that they should pick one over the other. When presented with a dilemma of fear, one needs to feel empowered, and they need to know how to keep those feelings in check. This could circumvent some of the natural tendency to stay afraid, avoid, and become defensive.
I think the pursuit of knowledge and truth, moreover, science, does this. You will find smart people who speak 5 ancient languages, spent their careers studying the bible, and still think Jesus came back from the dead, literally. To me, through their self-empowering exploration and opinion, they’ve only managed to develop a proclivity to defend any number of unchecked and unresolved ideas they have about life. If each of us is a king, and our arguments are castle walls, no matter the design or number of people whom we put upon them in our defense, it won’t cure our brain cancer. The main differences between people are how and why they accept information.
When an objective person is presented with an idea, it doesn’t matter what it is, they do not accept it absolutely. This is hyper, and in my opinion, necessary rationality. If you are a fan of saying “we can’t know everything” then we can keep a healthy skepticism about everything. When a subjective person is presented with an idea, they only care about how it fits into their mental and social contexts. As I tried to show earlier, if your mental and social context arose from a “bad” place like early church ideas, some edified political philosophy, or even just your really cool but really misinformed friends and family, in the long run you do no favors to yourself or your offspring by holding those idea absolute. And yes I understand this is where people argue for the cohesiveness of their family life etc, but hey even Jesus said to break those ties and follow him. Not like people do that anyway but…..
Of course, it’s here we get into more speculation than anything, but I think reasonable inferences can be made through examples. Who’s to say a belief in a god won’t be the most esteem promoting idea 50 years from now that leads to some massive overhaul in how we treat each other and view happiness? That isn’t the kind of question that really matters though. The questions that matter, that we can draw inferences from, come in the details. Can we infer that it is unhealthy and unproductive to cut off a little girls clitoris? I would hope if you’ve managed to make it to the internet there would be a resounding yes in the heads of my readers. Can we infer that an institution that harbors and defends the rape of young boys, even deaf young boys, does not have the best interests of its followers or alleged beliefs in mind? Again, please don’t hesitate to say yes.
What happens when we get to the more detailed questions is an ability to start saying yes or no. And for the record, this is explicitly the area there should be “debates” and arguments because the answers are not always clear. Is it a good idea to believe you exist after you die? What does that idea to do an individual? For example, I do not believe I will exist in any form of a heaven let alone hell, and it helps motivate me to appreciate the friends I have, take control, mostly, of my disposition, and glorify the work and influence I put into the world. It is one of the most empowering thoughts that I have a chance, however small, to be whatever the hell I want. For others, it could be the exact opposite. While I don’t actually believe those who say they would just go off and rape and murder people if there was no heaven or god, I think they are speaking at least to the very human problems of accountability and recognition. From there you can explore better ways of recognizing, and maybe even revamp what it means to be accountable.
Further nuanced questions. What impact does someone’s faith have on society? The plain truth of the matter is that faith alone, very obviously, is used as the excuse for extremely good and extremely bad things. Is faith in and of itself bad all together? When, why, and should we believe anything without evidence? Do we just need a better vocabulary for how we talk about the whole issue? Maybe you don’t really have faith, unquestioning, undeniable, and unshakable. Maybe you have a chain of life occurrences and a list of good and bad reasons that would dispose you to landing in a quasi-religious vein. No, it’s not as concise as, I have faith, or I believe in god, but is it reasonable to think this way is perhaps more accurate? When you break down someone’s life into moments and points of decision can you not better analyze and discuss where those decisions came from and how those moments happened? But, is this a process someone who absolves themselves of individuality, even if only superficially, likely to take?
In come again the individuals. Someone who is not as prone to joining up and fitting in still needs a context, a framework, and an ability resolve their own realities. If you have good reason to distrust the group/s, (see rape protection) because they suffer from parallel tendencies and internal discrepancies, you have to turn inward. You have to make it your priority to assess yourself in the context of this world so as not to subject yourself to the same things you view as problems. You are compelled to accept a problem for what it is. You are compelled to change. This cannot happen when you focus on adding another brick in your wall instead of realizing it’s 2010, Obama’s drone is still likely to annihilate you. See what I did there? Obama’s drone is like the science that will obliterate bad ideas and arguments….ha, and in the explosion it will illuminate the world that much more…and I lost that analogy before it began.
Back to seriousness though. This is a gigantic PR problem that my heroes of the atheist world and yes, I, have suffered from. It’s too easy to call someone deluded and say they should get over it. It doesn’t account for the nuances of thought or the holes that doing as such would create. I’ve been trying to get out of the habit of being extremely harsh in this way, and I think this blog is basically reflecting on why. I like to make it personal. When I question someone on their faith or alleged beliefs, I can’t help but ask direct questions and fish for specific answers. To me, the idea is we aren’t just basically stupid, we just aren’t engaged in a manner that prompts and expects intelligent answers. I imagine this is why it’s so easy for me to get headaches out of people. My skin still kind of crawls when I hear someone say they don’t believe in evolution or some comment to the effect that it is ridiculous or unproven. Almost in the same breath, ten seconds later, they’ll tell me they haven’t investigated or studied it even remotely. So how can I get angry or distressed by the statement that doesn’t really make sense? Even if I vehemently distrusted Einstein, I can’t say relativity is stupid and crazy if I can’t even begin to understand what it took to arrive at that theory. Nor does this mean you can’t learn why you can trust in his theory.
What bothers me more is how ready people are to make the claim in the first place. And actually, the worst feeling is when I want or can provide them with an opportunity to learn more and they absolutely want nothing to do with it. That’s when I feel I’m at the forefront of our demise. If someone genuinely offers me a website, book, or article on the bible or their beliefs, I read it. I then proceed to quote it, source check it, compare it to other sources of information, and break it down to what seems to be reasonable and what isn’t. To me, that’s respect and personal responsibility. If I quote the bible and get something wrong or source a textual critic you can prove to be fraudulent, I accept the clarification and cease using that person as source. Why do I not get the same level of respect? If we’re friends, or intellectuals, or just reasonable people, why am I not allowed to expect certain things about your behavior when it comes to dealing with information?
For me, I’m not really valuable to you or myself if I don’t have good reasons for my actions. If I can’t construct a context or line of reasoning to justify the things I put the most thought towards, what the hell was I doing with my brain power? Why should you rely on me for anything if I can’t even place where my own decisions are coming from? Would I really have anyone take the time to read four pages of my inferences and gleaned ideas if the message was about a new book I dug up that says we’ll all be living on Mars in ten years because god got angry at how we treated the earth? There is a standard I hold myself to, and it is one I wish I could “convert” everyone to. It keeps mine and others’ interests at heart because it identifies and understands, mostly explicitly, how and why those interests exist.
Your decisions affect everything. Your fear makes others afraid. Your lack of knowledge leaves others uninformed. People will suffer your existence, and I don’t think this is what most people seek to do to each other. In order to change anything though, you have to accept that you’re never just hurting yourself. Your best intentions don’t speak to the consequences. You don’t just lead your life.
I’m amazed, if you will, at the level of detail involved in any given situation and how any single aspect of that situation can send a wave of influence in any direction. To me, it speaks to the idea of how, unstable, perhaps everything is. It’s not even in just the details of someone’s life that urges them towards a specific faith. It goes farther into how and why they choose to interpret those details. It calls into question what they are even able of perceiving or comprehending before presented with a new idea or situation.
It’s this instability that influences my view in my previous blog to be “resolved” to the idea that nothing will change. Now, on its face this seems contradictory. How can I think nothing will change when it all rests on an unstable foundation. The question though speaks again to the nuances. The fact of the matter is, whether everyone believed in magic sky daddies or not, it does not remove the deeper unchanged foundation of fear and uncertainty. Whether every environmental and human rights foundation were the richest companies or not, it wouldn’t stop people from feeling greed. If every great idea had a platform and served to make the lives of millions a monochrome better, it would not escape one person who had the desire, resolve, or influence to pollute if not destroy it.
The problem, to me, is at the individual level. The answer to why has many answers; uninformed, not caring, unable, scared, deluded. The sad fact that to some level we all suffer to some extent of all of these conditions. While marred within these hindrances, or plagues, we establish our institutions from which to draw insight and inspiration; churches, governments, social hierarchies in general. Our ideas about truth and justice are embedded within these frameworks. So maybe I can denote the problem in a clearer way, the absolution of the individual. This seems too incomplete and not speaking to the deeper issues.
We create the establishments for reasons, albeit many bad ones along with the good, but reasons nonetheless. Where did we draw the reasons before the institutions existed? My initial thought is that pool of uniformed and scared instinct. At the heart of existence, at least that we can reasonably surmise so far, we are driven to reproduce. This does not take hundreds of years of moral debate and theological philosophy, but if those things exist in any capacity that facilitates more reproduction, then they are considered beneficial. This, another reason to not be overly dismayed at the idea that things won’t change.
But not to lose focus. We absolve ourselves, behave in relatively sensible ways from a genetic point of view, and are beleaguered by the haunting facts of our nature and existence. Now this brings up an interesting conundrum. If, at our core, we want to reproduce and create this fantastic future for our offspring, why are so many pitted against science and the ideas that will help them better understand how to live? I have a hard time believing that many people genuinely don’t want be alive and this is just some dramatic cultural “secret” suicide pact. I also don’t really believe people genuinely want their offspring to suffer.
Here we come back to the individual. I don’t think people even remotely appreciate their impact on the world. And yes, I am guilty of it too. We are resolved to the idea that you can never really see how you are perceived in someone else’s head, and therefore behave as if we aren’t really being perceived. But what of insecurity and social stigma? Well, maybe these are not really about other peoples’ thoughts, but your fear and misunderstanding of those thoughts. As much as we absolve ourselves in institutions, it doesn’t erase the plagues. What plagues you is part of what you take your individual self to be, and maybe it’s even the greater extent of most people. How necessary an escape becomes then.
In that regard, science can come off cold and uncaring, which pragmatically it is. Fundamental constants and objective observational accounts have little regard for your happiness. Science is the pursuit of understanding the natural world. This father figure who has been killing you for at least 200,000 years over every mistake you make and with every phenomenon you don’t understand. Perhaps we have a hard grained inclination to fear treading on the knowledge base of this powerful realm we’ve been punished by for so long. An individual at this point needs to be able to feel like they have a decision. I can’t even make the statement that they have to make a decision, or that they should pick one over the other. When presented with a dilemma of fear, one needs to feel empowered, and they need to know how to keep those feelings in check. This could circumvent some of the natural tendency to stay afraid, avoid, and become defensive.
I think the pursuit of knowledge and truth, moreover, science, does this. You will find smart people who speak 5 ancient languages, spent their careers studying the bible, and still think Jesus came back from the dead, literally. To me, through their self-empowering exploration and opinion, they’ve only managed to develop a proclivity to defend any number of unchecked and unresolved ideas they have about life. If each of us is a king, and our arguments are castle walls, no matter the design or number of people whom we put upon them in our defense, it won’t cure our brain cancer. The main differences between people are how and why they accept information.
When an objective person is presented with an idea, it doesn’t matter what it is, they do not accept it absolutely. This is hyper, and in my opinion, necessary rationality. If you are a fan of saying “we can’t know everything” then we can keep a healthy skepticism about everything. When a subjective person is presented with an idea, they only care about how it fits into their mental and social contexts. As I tried to show earlier, if your mental and social context arose from a “bad” place like early church ideas, some edified political philosophy, or even just your really cool but really misinformed friends and family, in the long run you do no favors to yourself or your offspring by holding those idea absolute. And yes I understand this is where people argue for the cohesiveness of their family life etc, but hey even Jesus said to break those ties and follow him. Not like people do that anyway but…..
Of course, it’s here we get into more speculation than anything, but I think reasonable inferences can be made through examples. Who’s to say a belief in a god won’t be the most esteem promoting idea 50 years from now that leads to some massive overhaul in how we treat each other and view happiness? That isn’t the kind of question that really matters though. The questions that matter, that we can draw inferences from, come in the details. Can we infer that it is unhealthy and unproductive to cut off a little girls clitoris? I would hope if you’ve managed to make it to the internet there would be a resounding yes in the heads of my readers. Can we infer that an institution that harbors and defends the rape of young boys, even deaf young boys, does not have the best interests of its followers or alleged beliefs in mind? Again, please don’t hesitate to say yes.
What happens when we get to the more detailed questions is an ability to start saying yes or no. And for the record, this is explicitly the area there should be “debates” and arguments because the answers are not always clear. Is it a good idea to believe you exist after you die? What does that idea to do an individual? For example, I do not believe I will exist in any form of a heaven let alone hell, and it helps motivate me to appreciate the friends I have, take control, mostly, of my disposition, and glorify the work and influence I put into the world. It is one of the most empowering thoughts that I have a chance, however small, to be whatever the hell I want. For others, it could be the exact opposite. While I don’t actually believe those who say they would just go off and rape and murder people if there was no heaven or god, I think they are speaking at least to the very human problems of accountability and recognition. From there you can explore better ways of recognizing, and maybe even revamp what it means to be accountable.
Further nuanced questions. What impact does someone’s faith have on society? The plain truth of the matter is that faith alone, very obviously, is used as the excuse for extremely good and extremely bad things. Is faith in and of itself bad all together? When, why, and should we believe anything without evidence? Do we just need a better vocabulary for how we talk about the whole issue? Maybe you don’t really have faith, unquestioning, undeniable, and unshakable. Maybe you have a chain of life occurrences and a list of good and bad reasons that would dispose you to landing in a quasi-religious vein. No, it’s not as concise as, I have faith, or I believe in god, but is it reasonable to think this way is perhaps more accurate? When you break down someone’s life into moments and points of decision can you not better analyze and discuss where those decisions came from and how those moments happened? But, is this a process someone who absolves themselves of individuality, even if only superficially, likely to take?
In come again the individuals. Someone who is not as prone to joining up and fitting in still needs a context, a framework, and an ability resolve their own realities. If you have good reason to distrust the group/s, (see rape protection) because they suffer from parallel tendencies and internal discrepancies, you have to turn inward. You have to make it your priority to assess yourself in the context of this world so as not to subject yourself to the same things you view as problems. You are compelled to accept a problem for what it is. You are compelled to change. This cannot happen when you focus on adding another brick in your wall instead of realizing it’s 2010, Obama’s drone is still likely to annihilate you. See what I did there? Obama’s drone is like the science that will obliterate bad ideas and arguments….ha, and in the explosion it will illuminate the world that much more…and I lost that analogy before it began.
Back to seriousness though. This is a gigantic PR problem that my heroes of the atheist world and yes, I, have suffered from. It’s too easy to call someone deluded and say they should get over it. It doesn’t account for the nuances of thought or the holes that doing as such would create. I’ve been trying to get out of the habit of being extremely harsh in this way, and I think this blog is basically reflecting on why. I like to make it personal. When I question someone on their faith or alleged beliefs, I can’t help but ask direct questions and fish for specific answers. To me, the idea is we aren’t just basically stupid, we just aren’t engaged in a manner that prompts and expects intelligent answers. I imagine this is why it’s so easy for me to get headaches out of people. My skin still kind of crawls when I hear someone say they don’t believe in evolution or some comment to the effect that it is ridiculous or unproven. Almost in the same breath, ten seconds later, they’ll tell me they haven’t investigated or studied it even remotely. So how can I get angry or distressed by the statement that doesn’t really make sense? Even if I vehemently distrusted Einstein, I can’t say relativity is stupid and crazy if I can’t even begin to understand what it took to arrive at that theory. Nor does this mean you can’t learn why you can trust in his theory.
What bothers me more is how ready people are to make the claim in the first place. And actually, the worst feeling is when I want or can provide them with an opportunity to learn more and they absolutely want nothing to do with it. That’s when I feel I’m at the forefront of our demise. If someone genuinely offers me a website, book, or article on the bible or their beliefs, I read it. I then proceed to quote it, source check it, compare it to other sources of information, and break it down to what seems to be reasonable and what isn’t. To me, that’s respect and personal responsibility. If I quote the bible and get something wrong or source a textual critic you can prove to be fraudulent, I accept the clarification and cease using that person as source. Why do I not get the same level of respect? If we’re friends, or intellectuals, or just reasonable people, why am I not allowed to expect certain things about your behavior when it comes to dealing with information?
For me, I’m not really valuable to you or myself if I don’t have good reasons for my actions. If I can’t construct a context or line of reasoning to justify the things I put the most thought towards, what the hell was I doing with my brain power? Why should you rely on me for anything if I can’t even place where my own decisions are coming from? Would I really have anyone take the time to read four pages of my inferences and gleaned ideas if the message was about a new book I dug up that says we’ll all be living on Mars in ten years because god got angry at how we treated the earth? There is a standard I hold myself to, and it is one I wish I could “convert” everyone to. It keeps mine and others’ interests at heart because it identifies and understands, mostly explicitly, how and why those interests exist.
Your decisions affect everything. Your fear makes others afraid. Your lack of knowledge leaves others uninformed. People will suffer your existence, and I don’t think this is what most people seek to do to each other. In order to change anything though, you have to accept that you’re never just hurting yourself. Your best intentions don’t speak to the consequences. You don’t just lead your life.
