Thought piece

[TheEarl]

“If you believe a truck is coming toward you, you will jump out of the way. That is belief in the reality of the truck. If you tell people you fear the truck but do nothing to get out of the way, that is not belief in the truck. Likewise, it is not belief to say God exists and then continue sinning and hoarding your wealth while innocent people die of starvation. When belief does not control your most important decisions, it is not belief in the underlying reality, it is belief in the usefulness of believing.”

“Are you saying God doesn’t exist?” I asked, trying to get to the point.

“I’m saying that people claim to believe in God, but most don’t literally believe. They only act as though they believe because there are earthly benefits in doing so. They create a delusion for themselves because it makes them happy.”

“So you think only the atheists believe their own belief?” I asked.

“No. Atheists also prefer delusions,” he said.

“So according to you, no one believes anything that they say they believe.”

“The best any human can do is to pick a delusion that helps him get through the day. This is why people of different religions can generally live in peace. At some level, we all suspect that other people don’t believe their own religion any more than we believe ours.”

Free e-book that can be found here. I thought this passage had the seeds of a good discussion in it.

The Earl

 

[yui]

“The best any human can do is to pick a delusion that helps him get through the day. This is why people of different religions can generally live in peace. At some level, we all suspect that other people don’t believe their own religion any more than we believe ours.”

I dunno, Earl. Those are strong words and suggest a sort of nihilism that I don't think defines "religion" very well. It feels a bit like the "religion is the opiate of the masses" mentality. Devaluing religion tends, I think, to make it more powerful to believers, not less.

Or not.

 

[Alex756]

But there is also belief that jumping out of the way will do some good

Then we all enter our rationalizing religious phase. The how much does going to church negate, how much does confession negate, how much does shoveling a neighbor's walk negate.

ITs like karma you collect the bad, but as long as you have just enough good to make it possitive you're golden.

Would you jumo out of the way if you also believed the driver would swerve? which way? indecision is paralizing.

~Alex

 

[TheEarl]

The book itself is actually thoroughly thought-provoking. It's prefaced with an author's note in which he asserts that wherever the beliefs of himself and his characters coincide is complete coincidence. It's basically a man having a conversation with a guy who knows hte answer to every question ever asked and has some delightful little thought provokers on religion, evolution, the idea of God, entropy, gravity, belief, and anything else you can lay your hands to. I think it's probably wise for your sanity to take it with a pinch of salt, but it's an audaciously ambitious book, which explains why the author (Scott Adams of Dilbert fame and presumably wealth) has decided to give it away free.

Try this passage for size:

“Let’s get back to evolution,” I said. “With all your talk about God, do you think he caused evolution? Or did it all happen in a few thousand years like the creationists believe?”

“The theory of evolution is not so much wrong as it is incomplete and useless.”

“How can you say it’s useless?”

“The theory of evolution leads to no practical invention. It is a concept that has no application.”

“Yeah, I hear what you’re saying,” I said. “But you have to agree that the fossil evidence of earlier species is pretty compelling. There’s an obvious change over time from the earlier creatures to the newer ones. How can you ignore that?”

“Imagine that an asteroid lands on Earth and brings with it an exotic bacteria that kills all organic matter on Earth and then dissolves without a trace. A million years later, intelligent aliens discover Earth and study our bones and our possessions, trying to piece together our history. They might notice that all of our cookware - the pots and pans and plates and bowls—all seemed to be related somehow. And the older ones were quite different from the newer ones. The earliest among them were crude bowls, all somewhat similar, generally made of clay or stone. Over time, the bowls evolved into plates and coffee cups and stainless-steel frying pans.

“The aliens would create compelling charts showing how the dishes evolved. The teacup family would look like its own species, related closely to the beer mug and the water glass. An observer who looked at the charts would clearly see a pattern that could not be coincidence. The cause of this dishware evolution would be debated, just as we debate the underlying cause of human evolution, but the observed fact of dishware evolution would not be challenged by the alien scientists. The facts would be clear. Some scientists would be bothered by the lack of intermediate dishware species—say, a frying pan with a beer mug handle—but they would assume it to exist somewhere undiscovered.”

“That might be the worst analogy ever made,” I said. “You’re comparing people to dishes.”

The old man laughed out loud for the first time since we began talking. He was genuinely amused.

“It’s not an analogy,” he said with a twinkle in his eye. “It’s a point of view. Evolution is compelling not because of the quality of the evidence but because of the quantity and variety of it. The aliens would have the same dilemma. There would be so much evidence for their theory of dishware evolution that opponents would be mocked. The alien scientists would theorize that forks evolved from spoons, which evolved from knives. Pots evolved from bowls. Dinner plates evolved from cutting boards. The sheer quantity and variety of the data would be overwhelming. Eventually they would stop calling it a theory and consider it a fact. Only a lunatic could publicly doubt the mountain of evidence.”

“There’s a big difference between dishes and animals,” I said. “With dishes, there’s no way they can evolve. Logic would tell the aliens that there was no way that a nonliving dish could produce offspring, much less mutant offspring.”

“That’s not exactly true,” he countered. “It could be said that the dishes used human beings in a symbiotic relationship, convincing us through their usefulness to make new dishes. In that way the dishes succeeded in reproducing and evolving. Every species takes advantage of other living things to ensure its survival. That is the normal way living things reproduce.

“You believe, without foundation, that the alien scientists would see a distinction between the living creatures and the nonliving dishes, and classify the dishes as mere tools. But that is a human-centric view of the world. Humans believe that organic things are more important than inorganic things because we are organic. The aliens would have no such bias. To them, the dishes would look like a hardy species that found a way to evolve and reproduce and thrive despite having no organic parts.”

No matter what you think of the theories (which aren't even his own beliefs, remember), the courage of a man who can write something like that is astounding.

The Earl