Religion Addiction

I made a simple promise to myself three years ago when I realized that I no longer had any religious faith left. I told myself I was an atheist now, with whatever that entailed, but I would not become one of those atheists who spend their lives hung up on religion. Religion, if false, was of no consequence as far as I was concerned. So, upon making peace with my atheism, I decided to close the door on religion.

As my past blogs have shown, this has been a spectacular failure. I simply can not do it. Religion is too interesting to me. Even if it is all nonsense, I have to say that it is the highest form of human nonsense and the kind of nonsense most worth poking, prodding, examining, and testing for anything redeemable. For a time I was able to put religion away and for a few months I had indeed reached the point where it just seemed like an immature state of mind that I had to grow out of. That only lasted a few months, though, before I was back to questions of what is beyond the universe.

To me the question is perfectly pointless. If there is something outside the universe, it would be beyond human comprehension. It would be like trying to get Pac Man to understand three-dimensional motion, artistic desire, and literature. You cannot fit these concepts into “waka waka waka.” Just so, if there is a God, we have to just accept the fact that he is in control, or not in control, or drunk at the wheel. The point being, God will do what God will do and we can not really change that. So the question is pointless to me.

And yet I keep asking the questions. Why? Well, I have one hopeless answer and one hopeful one. The hopeless answer is that I just have a religion addiction. I am addicted to questions pertaining to the concept of the supernatural, the concept that this world is not all that there is. That is not to say ghosts and demons (although those are interesting to me in their own ways), what it is to say is that I am obsessed with the possibility that even if you were to write a book containing all the facts and science in the world, that there would be still more content that was hidden from you and that maybe one day you are going to have a collision with all of that hidden reality.

My more hopeful answer is that I can not really contemplate the unknowable anyway, but I can contemplate the limits of our knowledge. I tend to take a dim view of the limits of our possible knowledge: I exclude religion, ethics, and aesthetics, and in some ways I say that none of our knowledge actually hangs on the world, but actually just hangs onto unknowable axioms thereby making all knowledge hypothetical. So by maintaining my religion addiction, I also provide myself with emotional fuel for an investigation that may actually prove valuable.

If I am to be perfectly honest, I do have another hope. Part of me thinks it is appropriate that my middle name is “Thomas.”

I have noticed over the time I have spent on the religious areas of the internet that I am not alone. I have seen atheists and theists (usually atheists and doubting theists) in various areas say that sometimes they find the whole religion question pointless, but they can not stop asking it. I remember one person asking if some people, regardless of which side of the debate they find themselves on, are just naturally always going to be drawn to religious questions.

I say yes, and I say you will not win in a fight against your own nature. So, hold out some hope that it will do some good, and keep asking the questions you want answers to.

A Belief Unlike Other Beliefs

Those who do believe in God do so in one of two ways: either they believe in a way that is different from the rest of their beliefs, or they believe in a way that is the same as the rest of their beliefs. The latter are in error. They simply are, I cannot conceive of any way that they are not mistaken short of God having personally revealed himself to them. Because we believe in the things that we believe in because we have encountered them or because they have been recorded by people who have encountered them (history and science) and these records can be scrutinized and relative degrees of reliability can be discovered. God, on the other hand, is not known in either of these ways. If someone believes in God in this way, he does himself a disservice: he has not experienced what it is really like to be religious. He just happens to believe in an additional science.

For those who believe in a way that is different from the rest of their beliefs, well, now all we have is linguistic similarity. Because if this belief is different from all other things called beliefs, we can always choose to call it something else, so as to make it plain how distinct this kind of belief is.

Positives in Conflict

Yesterday I gave “Good and Evil” as an example of two binary categories. And the way I defined binary categories was, “for any given criteria, all things in the universe will either fulfill or not fulfill the given criteria. Either/or. There is a binary value assigned to everything in the universe with regard to that criteria.” It could be objected that even if my account of binary categories holds of the world, Good and Evil would not be an example of such binary categories. It could be said that in the case of Good and Evil we have an example of Positives in Competition.

Suppose a man said that there was Good and he defined Good as “actions that proceed from the will to the greatest pleasure for the greatest number.” According to my account of binary categories, that means that everything that is not an action that proceed from a will to utilitarian happiness is evil. The man would probably disagree, he would say, “no, those things just aren't good.” And after all, if Good is the Positive category, the Negative would be “non-Good.” We could use the word “Evil,” but that would not follow human convention.

According to the way we usually use the word “Evil,” it has its own set of criteria. Maybe you define it as treating people as means and not as ends, or maybe you define it as intentionally neglecting one's duty in life. Either way, it has its own criteria. It does not depend on the criteria for a Positive category, it is itself a positive category.

In this case, if you say “Good is This” and you say “Evil is Thus” you have two Positives and these two Positive categories do not capture the entirety of the world. “Good is This” and “non-Good is non-This” on the other hand do capture the entirety of the world.

There is no confusion about most Positives. No one thinks that “True” and “Delicious” are in conflict, for example. But sometimes two Positives will come into conflict and cause people to suppose that they represent opposite sides of a pair of Binary Categories, like Love and Hate which actually have much in common with each other rather than being a pair of Binary Categories.

Either/Or; More/Less

For any given criteria, all things in the universe will either fulfill or not fulfill the given criteria. Either/or. There is a binary value assigned to everything in the universe with regard to that criteria. Present or absent. + or -. Yes or no.

The repetition of these categories in the universe may be what causes us to see the world through a binary category: Good/Evil. We cannot get our criteria to agree in this case, though. We cannot agree what criteria makes up “Good,” and without the criteria for one the other remains undefined. But we still have the binary categories, we use them in the course of speaking, and we understand one another because we all seem to share these two categories. We simply disagree about their content.

But, then, if in the case of Good and Evil we share the categories, but lack the criteria, perhaps Good and Evil is not the exception but the rule. Perhaps we have binary categories in our minds, but we do not know what the criteria for the binary categories are? Maybe we have our Positive and Negative, but the definition of “positive” remains to be seen?

This, however, is nonsense. Definitions are not discovered, definitions are made. The binary categories provide mental slots for us and we can plug in numerous definitions into the Positive category. Whatever we plug into the Positive category colors the entire world, because it can be asked of everything “does this fulfill the criteria?”

Through these binary categories we divide up the world. Either/or.

What about situations where the grammar doesn't make sense? Like asking “is this triangle spicy?” Is there a third category for these situations? Or do all these nonsense questions fall into the Negative category, since all triangles would necessarily not be spicy because spiciness is not a property of geometric shapes?

What about the shade or the gradient? What about situations where the binaries are just extremes and the things do not fulfill or not-fulfill the criteria, but rather less-fulfill and more-fulfill the criteria? What is an example of this? Are rabbits fast or not-fast? This question can only be answered vaguely, not precisely, and this is because of the nature of “fastness.” Things are not fast or non-fast, but are more fast or less fast. A cheetah is most fast, a slug is least fast; although a rocket is faster than a cheetah and a tree on an incline is slower than a slug. If you just ask if a rabbit is fast or non-fast, most likely you would answer whether he is in the upper or lower half of whatever the context of the conversation says he is being compared to.

Through these shades we divide up the world. More/less.

What about situations where the grammar doesn't make sense? Like asking “is this rock more or less sexually aroused?” The rock must be relegated to a binary Either/Or. Rocks are incapable of sexual arousal. They are all under the Negative category and therefore cannot fall anywhere on the gradient.

Qualia and the Monitor

It is said that requiring a “self” - that is, some sort of additional entity that is truly “I” behind all of the body and brain's processes, would lead to an infinite regress. If our bodies require an “I” then who is the “I”'s I?

On the contrary, the mystery we are puzzling through, leaving aside for a moment the Hard Problem, is this: it sometimes seems very much as though we are not our bodies or our brains. That is, it sometimes seems very much as though we are reading information gathered from our bodies and interpreted by our brains, but not that we are actually located there. It seems that way due to the limitations of our consciousness. It is known, for example, that our brains perform complex calculations to keep our eyes focused, that tiny emotional stabs come about after extensive analysis from the unconscious telling us when to act – such as when a football player knows when to throw the ball without having to consciously infer such, and that our brains can sustain our circulatory and respiratory systems without our conscious involvement.

In what way do these things belong to me?

It is not that we suppose that there must be a homunculus in our brains somewhere observing our experiences in a Cartesian theater. That would indeed lead to an infinite regress since the little homunculus would need a homunculus of his own. All that we need here is a dualism, and it is a dualism that casts our true selves as something radically different from our body, and the reason we suppose that we need a dualism is that it seems like we our reading our bodies rather than being our bodies.

Rather, it sometimes seems as though we approach the bundle that we call our body the way we (alongside our bodies) approach a computer. The computer performs numerous calculations in the background, it processes information, it checks conditionals written into computer coding, it crashes processes, it runs spyware, it checks for updates. Occasionally we are made aware of these background processes when the computer needs input from us to proceed, but largely these things take place without our knowledge. We receive the information that is meaningful and relevant to us on our monitors. Everything else is left in the background.

It is very much like this with the body. Much of the experience of being a body is hidden from us. All we have are those quales that we can make sense of. For this reason the body is alien to us. But then, if the body is alien, what is "us?"

God, Pain, and Why Christianity Struggles to Accept Evolution

There exists a popular misconception about Christianity and evolution, namely, that Christianity refuses to accept evolution because it runs contrary to the account of humanity's origin in Genesis. "Misconception" is probably the wrong word because for many Christians that is precisely why they do not accept the theory of evolution, but preserving a literal reading of Genesis is not that critical to many Christians who would still have a hard time meshing the theory of evolution with their Christian faith. It seems to be that the reason evolution is so offensive to the Christian is that it implies one of two unacceptable concepts: either the world is not broken, or God created a broken world.

Evolution does not work without death. If there is no way of removing traits that do not aid in reproduction and surviving until capable of reproduction, then evolution will not occur. It implies brutality. Christianity, however, teaches that God made a perfect world without death and teaches that death occurs only because the perfect order was broken when Adam sinned. If brutality existed prior to humanity - and therefore prior to sin - there are only two explanations. Either the world is not broken and death is just a part of the universe that God created; or the world is broken, death is an abomination, but God created a broken and abominable universe.

In the Christian narrative, God is blameless. It's all humanity's fault. Of course, the potter hath power over the clay, but still, Christianity makes humanity the cause of the pain in our existence, not God. Evolution states that death and brutality is the world's natural state. Consequently, the battle over a literal interpretation of Genesis is just a surface conflict for the Christian, even if it is conceded that Genesis does not need to be literally true there is still the deeper issue of the universe being essentially deadly while death is thought to be the wage of sin.

What would it take for Christianity as a whole to be reconciled to evolution? I suppose they would need to do away with the notion that the world is broken or shattered or in some way deficient from its proper design. To do away with this notion is to do away with the Christian narrative, though, it makes Christ's death superfluous. Is it possible to believe that the world is as God intended it to be and also believe that there was a need for Christ crucified? I do not know. From my vantage point, it seems that Christianity presupposes a diseased world. Besides all this, though, there is the fact that if the world is not broken and the world contains suffering and death, then that means God is the one who added suffering and death to the universe, which implies that God has a dark side to him that most of us would not want to contemplate while seeking comfort on a Sunday.

There does exist the alternative possibility that the world is broken, but that God intentionally made a broken world while intending to heal it later. This certainly makes more sense for someone who thinks that an unintentionally broken world implies incompetence on God's part, but it retains the implication that suffering and death exists because of God, not because of sin. Again, this causes friction when Christians try to think of God as the enemy of their pain.

So, can Christianity ever be reconciled to evolution? I think so. But to have a worldview that robustly embraces both the Christian faith and the theory of evolution would mean radically rethinking the relationship between God, death, and human suffering. It would have to accept pain as being an instrument and creation of God rather than an affront to Him.

The Repeatedly Redundant Recycling of Reviewings

If I were writing a book, I would only need to make any given point within that book one time. I may choose to repeat my point in order to make a certain impression on the reader's mind, but it is only essential that I make a point once so that it can serve whatever function it serves as part of my larger argument or explanation. That's a book, though, you only write it once. This is a blog, and on blogs it is essential that you repeat yourself.

Not verbatim, of course, the repetition should change each time. And the changes should not just be aesthetic changes used to mask the repetition. Each time you repeat yourself on a blog, you should be looking at what you are saying from a different angle, treating it a little differently, playing with the light so that you can really understand what you are discussing. If you have readers, this is a way of returning to the core essence of your blog that attracted them in the first place; if you write for yourself, this is a way of returning yourself to old fascinations to see what they look like after you have changed.

Some blogs are essentially nothing more than this. There is some central theme that the blog author just posts over and over again, the only difference being variations in the news articles that precede the repeated theme. Other times it is a handful of themes. But in anything published over time rather than all at once, it is essential that you repeat yourself.

I do not want it to be misunderstood that this post is about what works for bloggers. Look to the right, does that page count look like the page count of a man who knows what works for bloggers? This is about how important repetition is period. Because even leaving the whole concept of writing behind, we have to repeat ourselves to maintain any kind of stability in ourselves. We need rituals, we need habits, we need traditions that bring us back to our past. Without this kind of repetition, our present self lacks ties to our past selves and will be equally alien to our future selves. We will constantly spin off in whatever direction seems most lovely at any given time, we will lack anchors to ground ourselves and bring us back to familiar points of view. It is in this way that we have something like a persistent self.

That is why we should not fear redundancy. This is why we should be okay with repetition. This is why we should embrace covering old ground. This is why it is desirable that we should do the same thing again and again.

Relax; You Are Probably Just Hungry

There was one day in my life where I was just weary. Existence seemed to be a burden. Anything I read that I disagreed with seemed like malicious stones hurled at the house of cards I happened to prefer in those days. And everything I did agree with just reminded me what a loveless view of the world I had. Everything was just so... bad.

I remember standing there in my room looking at the floor and thinking morbid thoughts to myself. I thought about how hard life can be. I thought about how unsatisfying a day could be. I thought about how cold and indifferent the universe. I thought about... how long had it been since I last ate?

I took my morbid, dark, brooding (and, at the time, significantly overweight) self to the kitchen and microwaved something. I ate it while contemplating the futility of all human endeavor. The ultimate oblivion that awaited us. The cruel joke that was played on humanity by making our nature love existence while also promising to one day take it away from us. And after throwing away my ready-in-five-minutes chow mein container and returning to the poorly lit lair where I spun together my nihilistic indictments of our cruel universe (with Batman stickers on the wall), I realized that things did not seem so bad anymore.

I hadn't eaten for about 12 hours, not counting the time I spent sleeping. My body was unsatisfied and that produced a sensation of need and longing. I just didn't know what I needed and longed for. So everything I thought about was seen through the lens of dissatisfaction: thinking about life made life seem empty, if I had thought about something else that something else would have also seemed gloomy and drab. While I embellished a tad for the sake of being nominally entertaining, this is essentially a true story. I really was in a dark and depressed mood, all my thoughts were tending toward nihilism, and then I gave my body some calories and started feeling better.

After I noticed this, I decided to test the extents of this. I purposely went without substantial food for three days, only allowing myself water and the occasional energy drink. But this time I did so while expecting a morbid mood to seize me. It may have been a self-fulfilling prediction, but it worked. By the third day the world seemed gray and unfriendly to me: squabbles on the internet seemed more hateful, interaction with people seemed more frustrating, the universe seemed a little more indifferent. But I had the conscious thought that the world was not the way it seemed: I was purposely mucking with my own body and purposely producing impressions that were more antagonistic than they would ordinarily seem. I walked to a nearby restaurant and ordered a 1500 calorie breakfast while scribbling notes in a little notebook I brought with me. I walked out jolly enough and ready to continue being a human; the color returned to the universe and I walked home satisfied.

Ever since then I have always been skeptical whenever I or anyone else provides an explanation of their moods and emotions. You may think that the reason you feel anxious is that you feel you are surrounded by uncaring people, but maybe you're mildly dehydrated: go drink 32 ounces of water and see if you still feel unloved. Maybe you feel that the world is small, you're never going to go anywhere in life, and you're just spinning your wheels until you keel over. This may very well be true and you should certainly try to do something about it, but maybe you should get some sunshine first and see if you still feel that your lot is so terrible. I'm not saying that you are wrong, I'm just saying rule out biological explanations before you resign yourself to shouldering a new emotional burden.

We are insulted when someone says that our deepest and more personal (at the moment, anyway) struggles are just biological issues. It's insulting the way it is when someone disregards your discontent as being the result of hormones or someone saying you're only aggravated because you have high blood pressure. We are insulted because, dreadful though they may be, these morbid perspectives and perceived struggles seem real to us and we feel that treating them as less than real is a kind of retreat from the harshness of reality. Yet, maybe you have it backward, maybe reality will return once you get a little fresh air.

I am not saying emotional disturbance does not exist. I am not saying that it is impossible to be deeply troubled by what one finds in the universe. I am not even necessarily saying that those dark thoughts you have from time to time are false. What I am proposing a simple maxim, a helpful guideline that has worked for me: Whenever you're anxious, irritated, nervous, or troubled about something, make sure you are well-fed, well-hydrated, well-rested, and in good health and then see if you are equally anxious, irritated, nervous, or troubled.

You might be surprised how much can be solved by a hamburger and a bottle of water.

Mmmm, existential comfort.

Note: This blog was inspired by me coming home from work irritated and anxious for vague reasons. As I sat in my bed expecting a sleepless night followed by another shift at work I realized I was sweating from the heat of the house. Then I realized that my only hydration came from a Starbucks Doubleshot I had about three hours earlier. I started this blog anxious, paused to drink two 16 oz. bottles of water, and finished the blog more or less completely at ease.

Love of America

I love America. I love my nation. Why? This is not a sensible question I could answer. It is not as though I could point to certain particulars of the government or geography and say, "I love America for these reasons." In fact, it is all quite arbitrary, if America were to suddenly shift two degrees left or right on all issues, I would continue to love America. It is not the sort of love that has to be earned, it is the kind of love that is given freely.

I love America because it is mine. Because whatever it is, I am a part of it. The people I know are a part of it. My culture, the parts I like and the parts I hate, are American. The places I go are American. My day-to-day world is an American world. This is the nation that I am a part of, and there is no other reason needed to love it.

A Trade-Off

Time spent talking is not time spent listening.

And time spent writing is not time spent reading.

So I have gotten a little more writing done than I have gotten done for a fair while, but the trade-off has been that I have gotten almost no reading done. This is the perfect recipe for becoming someone who posts a lot but says next to nothing.

But what can you do? Your available free hours are limited, every moment you set aside to do one thing is time taken away from everything else. And I can not multi-task worth shit.