Page 6
E S S A Y S
By The Number
e15
MISSILE-LANEOUS
While watching a TV show on dinosaurs, I was reminded of my thoughts with regard to an article on Jane Fonda, accusing her of traitorous acts during the Vietnam War. While on a visit to North Vietnam, Ms. Fonda allegedly reviewed a lineup of American POW pilots during which she was secretly handed one or more notes by the prisoners. Afterward, Ms. Fonda supposedly turned the messages over to her communist hosts who, in reprisal, proceeded to brutally beat her fellow Americans.
Returning to the television program, it detailed the newest information on the Tyrannosaurus Rex as revealed by Jack Horner, one of the leading paleontologists in the country. The viewpoint he expressed is controversial because it goes against everything everyone thought to be true about the T-Rex. Namely that it was not the glorious predator always imagined and as portrayed in movies, but rather an ugly scavenger who lumbered about and ate other dinosaurs’ leftovers. His is a minority opinion, but seems supported by the available facts. As an example, he compared the anatomical similarities and differences between modern predators and scavengers. T-Rex shared almost everything in common with the scavengers, and virtually nothing with the predators. Given this and a good deal of other information Dr. Horner provided, it was certainly clear to me that his proposition was worth serious consideration. So much for Jurassic Park.
An additional element that made the show especially noteworthy was the peculiar absence of all dissenting opinions. None of the other scientists who think Horner has “flipped his lid” were interviewed or allowed to express why they think he's wrong. So much for one-sided facts. As compelling as I found Horner's arguments, I was left dissatisfied and unconvinced because of the obvious omissions cited.
By comparison, the one element missing from the story about Ms. Fonda was her response or rebuttal to her accusers, or an explanation or excuse for what she presumably did. Had the piece explained how Ms. Fonda had been interviewed, asked about the incident in question, and her reaction had been documented as less than forthcoming, less than clear and concise, or that she could not recall the event, then I would be among the first to want to see her wrapped in a communist flag and deported to North Vietnam.
Police authorities are the first to tell us how eyewitness testimony is oftentimes inaccurate, especially in terms of describing objective facts about an event he or she experienced. Though often truthful and good at saying what they saw, such witnesses are frequently bad at understanding the complete and complex details of what really transpired. UFO sightings serve as excellent examples of how first-hand descriptions are no guarantee of accuracy.
No doubt the incident with Ms. Fonda, as observed by the prisoners, if it happened at all, transpired exactly as they saw and reported it. But imagine just for a moment, that Ms. Fonda wanted to conceal the messages handed to her, but was informed beforehand, that if she kept any and they were found, that all the pilots would be killed instead of only beaten. This is not to suggest in any way that things occurred even remotely in such a fashion. Or that Ms. Fonda was capable of behaving any differently from how the negative articles about her would have us believe. I'm just sayin'.
So I want to see and read her account of what happened and why. I want to hear both sides before condemning anybody. Not knowing if she has ever been allowed to respond or has done so in the past, it seems an obvious gaping hole in an incomplete story. Again, however, anything less (on Fonda’s part) than a complete refutation of the accusations made, plus some explanation as to how things could have been misinterpreted, is reason enough to not only hold her in contempt, but anyone who would befriend her as well. Let alone the lack of action taken in prosecuting her for what was surely a treasonous act.
Though heinous beyond belief, the ongoing terrorist attacks around the world do not allow for retaliation against innocent countries or parties. Nor do they permit revenge against anyone without solid evidence. We demand more proof than former President Bill Clinton possessed when he launched missiles against an aspirin factory.
Show me the money, show me the proof, show me the man (or the woman). It's why I don't believe in capital punishment. In our zeal for justice, we occasionally goof. Oops. We thought for sure you were the one. At least we got some of the bad ones, too. Except for Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which were uniquely aberrant, the preservation of innocent life should always take precedence when prosecuting guilt. Especially when extreme prejudice is involved.
Subject for a later day is the not-so-clear definition of what constitutes "proof". Sometimes it's plain as day. But only sometimes. And when one acts in a high stakes game of retribution, one had better be sure they’re right. Better than sure. Absolutely, positively certain. As if someone’s life depended on it.
Returning to the television program, it detailed the newest information on the Tyrannosaurus Rex as revealed by Jack Horner, one of the leading paleontologists in the country. The viewpoint he expressed is controversial because it goes against everything everyone thought to be true about the T-Rex. Namely that it was not the glorious predator always imagined and as portrayed in movies, but rather an ugly scavenger who lumbered about and ate other dinosaurs’ leftovers. His is a minority opinion, but seems supported by the available facts. As an example, he compared the anatomical similarities and differences between modern predators and scavengers. T-Rex shared almost everything in common with the scavengers, and virtually nothing with the predators. Given this and a good deal of other information Dr. Horner provided, it was certainly clear to me that his proposition was worth serious consideration. So much for Jurassic Park.
An additional element that made the show especially noteworthy was the peculiar absence of all dissenting opinions. None of the other scientists who think Horner has “flipped his lid” were interviewed or allowed to express why they think he's wrong. So much for one-sided facts. As compelling as I found Horner's arguments, I was left dissatisfied and unconvinced because of the obvious omissions cited.
By comparison, the one element missing from the story about Ms. Fonda was her response or rebuttal to her accusers, or an explanation or excuse for what she presumably did. Had the piece explained how Ms. Fonda had been interviewed, asked about the incident in question, and her reaction had been documented as less than forthcoming, less than clear and concise, or that she could not recall the event, then I would be among the first to want to see her wrapped in a communist flag and deported to North Vietnam.
Police authorities are the first to tell us how eyewitness testimony is oftentimes inaccurate, especially in terms of describing objective facts about an event he or she experienced. Though often truthful and good at saying what they saw, such witnesses are frequently bad at understanding the complete and complex details of what really transpired. UFO sightings serve as excellent examples of how first-hand descriptions are no guarantee of accuracy.
No doubt the incident with Ms. Fonda, as observed by the prisoners, if it happened at all, transpired exactly as they saw and reported it. But imagine just for a moment, that Ms. Fonda wanted to conceal the messages handed to her, but was informed beforehand, that if she kept any and they were found, that all the pilots would be killed instead of only beaten. This is not to suggest in any way that things occurred even remotely in such a fashion. Or that Ms. Fonda was capable of behaving any differently from how the negative articles about her would have us believe. I'm just sayin'.
So I want to see and read her account of what happened and why. I want to hear both sides before condemning anybody. Not knowing if she has ever been allowed to respond or has done so in the past, it seems an obvious gaping hole in an incomplete story. Again, however, anything less (on Fonda’s part) than a complete refutation of the accusations made, plus some explanation as to how things could have been misinterpreted, is reason enough to not only hold her in contempt, but anyone who would befriend her as well. Let alone the lack of action taken in prosecuting her for what was surely a treasonous act.
Though heinous beyond belief, the ongoing terrorist attacks around the world do not allow for retaliation against innocent countries or parties. Nor do they permit revenge against anyone without solid evidence. We demand more proof than former President Bill Clinton possessed when he launched missiles against an aspirin factory.
Show me the money, show me the proof, show me the man (or the woman). It's why I don't believe in capital punishment. In our zeal for justice, we occasionally goof. Oops. We thought for sure you were the one. At least we got some of the bad ones, too. Except for Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which were uniquely aberrant, the preservation of innocent life should always take precedence when prosecuting guilt. Especially when extreme prejudice is involved.
Subject for a later day is the not-so-clear definition of what constitutes "proof". Sometimes it's plain as day. But only sometimes. And when one acts in a high stakes game of retribution, one had better be sure they’re right. Better than sure. Absolutely, positively certain. As if someone’s life depended on it.
Fig. 1. Maybe fish have maps of the world. But in reverse?
e16
WHO, WHAT, WHY, WHERE, HOW, & WHEN
A list of anything always includes “who” because we cannot get outside ourselves. Paintings do not include their artists, the whole persons behind the artworks. The canvas is but a partial abstraction of the complete person who rendered it. An original minus the creator. The artist signs in an effort to include him or herself. The signature is prized in an effort to possess the wholeness. The painting, figuratively a map, is not the artist, who is figuratively a territory, who is what the map represents. Nor is the finished canvas an “entirety” which would include the picture, the artist, the world, and the universe.
Mental maps drawn via our physical senses, our innate personalities, include observations and ideas about everything we experience. We must never mistake these maps (our opinions and beliefs) as being the actual territories themselves, as the true nature of realities we barely perceive at all. If and when we do, we fail to reckon the dire consequences wherein billions of separate individuals -- each in possession of their own maps -- are also free, the same as ourselves, to misinterpret and misconstrue the nature of the same world. To do so in manners that directly or indirectly conflict with our own maps, those of others, and subsequently result in chaotic situations where most everyone wanders alone, largely aimless, and utterly lost. A condition not altogether different from the current, worldwide state of affairs.
Noteworthy are the phenomena whereby groups of unimaginative mapmakers seek out or stumble upon those whose maps are vastly superior to their own. People who remain prone to map reading rather than making. Whereby we read the maps of others, adopt the maps of others, defend others’ maps, kill the heretics who refuse to accept the one and only map(s). Our inability to distinguish false maps, or purely invented maps that seduce but don’t enlighten. The orderly, regimented life and the map that directs it.
Mental maps drawn via our physical senses, our innate personalities, include observations and ideas about everything we experience. We must never mistake these maps (our opinions and beliefs) as being the actual territories themselves, as the true nature of realities we barely perceive at all. If and when we do, we fail to reckon the dire consequences wherein billions of separate individuals -- each in possession of their own maps -- are also free, the same as ourselves, to misinterpret and misconstrue the nature of the same world. To do so in manners that directly or indirectly conflict with our own maps, those of others, and subsequently result in chaotic situations where most everyone wanders alone, largely aimless, and utterly lost. A condition not altogether different from the current, worldwide state of affairs.
Noteworthy are the phenomena whereby groups of unimaginative mapmakers seek out or stumble upon those whose maps are vastly superior to their own. People who remain prone to map reading rather than making. Whereby we read the maps of others, adopt the maps of others, defend others’ maps, kill the heretics who refuse to accept the one and only map(s). Our inability to distinguish false maps, or purely invented maps that seduce but don’t enlighten. The orderly, regimented life and the map that directs it.
Invisible ultraviolet on the left, invisible infrared on the right.
Fig. 2. Box with visible light end-to-end. We just don't see it all.
e17
DIMENSIONS or DIMENTIA?
One of the more humbling realizations, plenty of which abound, about life and the universe, is how little we actually know about either. To question the meaning of life is to concurrently ponder the meaning of everything. Our lives do not exist as separate from the furthermost star hurtling through the outermost region of the cosmos. Something ties both together. Ties all together. Some common thread, some single origin or characteristic. Some single dimension or plane of existence. Inside our body exists some portion of an atom or particle that was, at one time, united with material that now composes something at the furthermost edge of the universe. The conscious mind reels at the prospect of such a truth.
A strong argument can also be proffered as to the existence of a multitude of different dimensions. The term, dimension, is meant to describe adjacent or overlapping realms of reality that incorporate uniquely consistent and coherent qualities distinct from our own. Just as a plethora of TV channels and radio station signals pass unseen through the air in the form of invisible light waves or frequencies, multiple “reality shells”, likely spherical in nature, could conceivably coexist among one another.
All light waves merge and overlap, yet maintain their individual integrity. The human realm of existence is only one type of tuner, a single channel selection on a remote control that contains an unknown but likely immense number of choices. In one or more ways, in large or small degrees, each dimension is slightly but significantly out-of-sync, each with the other, hence an unawareness, each of the other.
Two things cannot normally share the same space. Matter and anti-matter, negative matter and negative energy repulse, cancel, extinguish and annihilate one another, similar to how the same poles of separate magnets seem to interact with one another. Yet light, in its many machinations, with its full spectrum of colors, appears quite able to simultaneously occupy mutual, identical space. In much the same way, different reality shells -- planes of existence -- might fill the same areas. But more than parallel, more than alongside or between. And not as true levels or planes. Within, without, through, among, and of, are probably more accurate descriptions.
No apparent reasons are evident for why such a system of planes does or does not exist. A few indications, though meager and subtle, seem to hint at some form of universal dimensional “frames”. Examples such as Black Holes may offer clues and tease us with suggestions of differing realities. Places and spaces where time flows at different rates. Where such variances could be of so great an extent as to represent fantastic and bizarre states of being, utterly alien, incomprehensible, undetectable to both human senses and sensibilities.
A strong argument can also be proffered as to the existence of a multitude of different dimensions. The term, dimension, is meant to describe adjacent or overlapping realms of reality that incorporate uniquely consistent and coherent qualities distinct from our own. Just as a plethora of TV channels and radio station signals pass unseen through the air in the form of invisible light waves or frequencies, multiple “reality shells”, likely spherical in nature, could conceivably coexist among one another.
All light waves merge and overlap, yet maintain their individual integrity. The human realm of existence is only one type of tuner, a single channel selection on a remote control that contains an unknown but likely immense number of choices. In one or more ways, in large or small degrees, each dimension is slightly but significantly out-of-sync, each with the other, hence an unawareness, each of the other.
Two things cannot normally share the same space. Matter and anti-matter, negative matter and negative energy repulse, cancel, extinguish and annihilate one another, similar to how the same poles of separate magnets seem to interact with one another. Yet light, in its many machinations, with its full spectrum of colors, appears quite able to simultaneously occupy mutual, identical space. In much the same way, different reality shells -- planes of existence -- might fill the same areas. But more than parallel, more than alongside or between. And not as true levels or planes. Within, without, through, among, and of, are probably more accurate descriptions.
No apparent reasons are evident for why such a system of planes does or does not exist. A few indications, though meager and subtle, seem to hint at some form of universal dimensional “frames”. Examples such as Black Holes may offer clues and tease us with suggestions of differing realities. Places and spaces where time flows at different rates. Where such variances could be of so great an extent as to represent fantastic and bizarre states of being, utterly alien, incomprehensible, undetectable to both human senses and sensibilities.
Fig. 3. I don't think this picture really needs a caption.
e18
POSITIVELY the ABSOLUTE LAST WORD on the SUBJECT of EVOLUTION
Part I: Comments On Primitivism And Hostile Environments.
Many scientists assume that because living terrestrial organisms are found thriving in the most inhospitable of places, that life elsewhere on other planets may be far more abundant than previously thought. Earlier notions held, prior to deep explorations into Antarctica and oceanic trenches, that life in any form could only exist within a relatively narrow range of “friendly” temperatures and other environmental conditions.
Since recent discoveries have found colonies of bacteria, algae, and other organisms living comfortably beside boiling, toxic thermal vents -- the most unlikely of habitats -- speculation has been fueled as to the likelihood of extraterrestrial life. With alvinellid worms, yeasts, and halobacteria as Earthly examples of what scientists refer to as extremophiles, other planets and moons previously discarded as possible homes to such life have been reintroduced as candidates for consideration, along with those deemed the most suitable.
The change in how scientists now approach this general topic significantly increases the sheer number of sites where life might conceivably evolve. Though again the premise for such thinking relies on observed circumstances as they currently exist. In doing so, this basis for optimism seems to ignore some rather troubling questions. Queries that, if correct, would once more reduce the odds -- in favor of life -- to more sobering, less exuberant levels.
Chances are high that any resilient lifeform capable of surviving environmental extremes migrated from less harsh, friendlier, more moderate locales. At one time, oxygen was a gas poisonous to early forms of life which eventually embraced the toxin as a vital, life-sustaining necessity. It seems quite reasonable that on a planet where life begins and succeeds, it will ultimately occupy every niche available. And since the Darwinian forces of Natural Selection are now seen as possessing the ability to fill niches of extraordinary variety, it is equally reasonable to suspect that high temperature thermal vents would become, sooner or later, a home to something living. But only as an end, not a beginning. Only as a location that, over eons of time, became homey to organisms that slowly adapted to new and extraordinary habitats.
It is a testimony to the aimlessness, the lack of conscious or intelligent design, that life would venture into such perilous domains. Realms that are far from being hostile to the indigenous populations who reside there. These lifeforms are highly evolved, even more so, perhaps, than their “fair weather” cousins. It could be postulated that the most successful forms, thriving in the most cozy of environments, are indeed the more primitive. And those occupying the harshest environments, the most sophisticated.
A less dramatic, more probable scenario contends that very specific conditions are a prerequisite for life to first emerge anywhere. It is here, then, that a narrow range of temperatures and other factors determine the advent or failure of the life process. Soon afterward, concepts of primitive and hostile become increasingly blurred, murky, while the environment grows ever more friendly and hospitable to an ever expansive array of adaptive species.
As life expands and evolves outward from its initial roots, it finds ways into whatever locales the momentum of natural selection carries it. Though not worst-case scenarios, remote niches do represent last-case scenarios. This does not bode well for life as a force blossoming under a wide set of conditions, but unfortunately as a slim possibility under the best of circumstances.
Part II: A Final Few Questions That Include Some Last Tidbits Of Conjecture.
01. To what final, ultimate extent might life be able to adapt itself?
02. Are there any limits to the genetic mutations possible via Natural Selection?
03. Are microbes and others still adapting to ever more severe conditions?
04. Is it only a matter of time before organisms not only live near volcanoes, but dwell inside them?
05. Do spores, bacteria or others, already thrive near the fringes of Outer Space? In Space itself?
06. Might one form of life based upon one or more elements, evolve into forms based on other elements? Carbon-forms into silicate forms and vice versa.
Fig. 4. When robots have pets.
e19
BRAINS and MINDS
Animal Consciousness Versus Human Sentience
The Unintended Consequences of Advanced Adaptations
Evolution may not be restricted only to living plants and animals. The doctrine applies equally well to inanimate, geological processes. Natural Selection of nonliving matter would antedate the somewhat late arrival of life itself. It is not only the precursor to, but the necessary requirement for, all necessary steps that lead to the earliest beginnings of life. Probably a very conditional process within a very narrow range of circumstances.
The Golden Accident / The Birth of Conscious Brains, Self Awareness, and the Sentient Mind.
True intelligence, or mind, is not defined by an ability to act independently, with purposeful self-interest, or as a response to an environment in such a way as to enhance or secure one’s survival. Nor is it the ability to alter the environment in such ways that survival is promoted and maintained.
Animals are expert survivalists. Humans are at the mercy of most creatures which, armed with claws, fangs, acute senses and other faculties, are far better suited and equipped for living in a wilderness environment. Early humans were not satisfied with simply overcoming the dangers posed by their bestial rivals. Intelligence is not a defensive quality. It is pure offense. Where we are the hunter, the killer, the thinker and doer. Only secondarily, as a consequence of bigger brains, do we escape being killed ourselves. Do we then seek to change the environment to suit our less immediate needs. A hierarchy of food, sex, comfort, in that order. Eat better, more often, equals more healthy offspring, leisure time, equals improved living standards. And the appreciation of same.
The Computer Model Of Mind.
Ultimately, advances in artificial intelligence must lead to an authentic presence of actual mind. Nature tends to maximize survival skills, and mentality is merely an interesting tool found at the far end of a very long list. Being alive leads to consciousness, leads to intelligence, but not necessarily, to mind. Artificial input accelerates the process. Catastrophic change constantly shuffles the genetic deck.
The first level is life itself, as defined according to a variety of non-controversial clinical criteria. Microbes, by example. Modern computers are, by these standards, living organisms.
The second level is consciousness, which is the ability to choose from various courses of action based on a limited range of stimuli and instinctual response options. Ants to Zebras, as examples. Computers, again, compare favorably with these levels of awareness.
The third level involves basic intelligence. An ability to adapt a wide range of available behaviors to a diversity of environmental challenges and physical conditions. Whales, primates, as examples. A state only slightly beyond the limits of the most advanced forms of artificial intelligence.
The fourth level is mind. Total, self-aware intelligence. The awakened brain. The sentient being. Mind does not necessarily appear as a direct result of higher intelligence levels or brain size. Nor is it due solely to sophisticated faculties and associated cerebral structures, such as tissue folds and convolutions. Because human infants possess an innate aptitude for language, self awareness and other traits, the human brain itself houses some inner ability that is easily tapped, exploited, and developed. A combination of many anatomical structures may facilitate higher brain functions. The ability to vocalize sounds. A synergistic effect wherein the sum is greater than the individual values of constituent “parts”.
Artificial Intelligence, in order to awaken from its present comatose condition, must learn to ask questions -- especially “why”. Inquiry for its own sake, is an exclusively human trait. The meaning of irony is also essential, plus an appreciation for humor. Language is expedient and emotion-based. Intellect, an advantageous by-product, leads to perpetual cycles of invention, discovery, technology, then reinvention, rediscovery and so forth. Because emotion has been shown to be an electro-chemical reaction in brains, it should therefore be reproducible and more importantly, inducible.
With a tendency to remain dormant, if not encouraged, higher intellectual abilities can be repressed if restrained by external forces. Cases of human children raised by wolves, those of childhood abuse and neglect, as examples. Animals teach and promote survival skills only. Primates do much the same. Only humans encourage frivolous behaviors, promote dangerous activities, develop culture and enforce language skills. Simultaneously.
Humans possess two fortuitous attributes:
01. An anatomical ability to speak.
02. The compulsion to speak.
Each of these two elements reinforces the other. Though chimps communicate, they cannot and do not converse. While intricate, creation of a formal language may be the result of specific environmental dictates. In the absence of such pressures, accompanied by a lack of the necessary anatomical changes via mutation, improvements in the speech centers of the brain are neither favored nor selected for. Opposite conditions both favor and select for enhanced brain structures associated with language skills.
Language is mind. Mind is language. Mind/language is identical to space/time. Intra-communications among family, tribe, group, society. Inter-communication among societies, cultures, civilizations. Long term memory plus the cumulative memories of many generations, equals the continuous growth of intellectual evolution. Cooperation among all for the common good of all. The communal self-interest versus (in concert with) that of the individual. Symbiosis versus commensalism versus parasitism. Suppression of the personal for the societal good. Ability to recognize that the larger good reverts to the good of the individual.
Self-reflexivity. That we selfishly prosper by virtue of the healthy whole.
The Price of Glory.
Severe consequences and dangerous penalties result from the thinking and ideas inspired by enhanced, sentient brains. Warfare, the Seven Deadly Sins, misunderstandings and self-inflicted irrationalities. Dishonesty, self-indulgence, and intentional cruelty. The noble preservation of the mentally/physically disabled, which taps society’s limited available resources. Neurotic or psychotic individuals who, for one reason or another, fail to incorporate impulse control and self-restraint. Such persons pose extreme dangers to others and themselves. Individuals who suffer mild to extreme psychological pathologies. Such persons also pose extreme hazards to others and themselves. Both conditions may be one and the same. The propensity to enslave others to our personal will and whims.
Evidence exists that mind/language, though neither positive nor negative in an objective sense, may ultimately act counter to the evolutionary processes which spawned it. Such effects include a proclivity for self-destruction. Both at the personal level and culturally. Self-abuse plus cruelty to, abuse of, people, animals, and the environment.
Humankind is engaged in a life and death struggle for survival wherein it is pitted against itself. Against its own savagery, its historical, evolutionary roots. A race against time that is equal to any fictional adventure epic rife with intrigue, danger, and suspense. The conclusion of the story has yet to be written. Whether it can be finished at all is uncertain, for several different outcomes are possible:
NEGATIVE
01. Utter annihilation via weapons of mass destruction/warfare/terrorism.
02. Extermination via biological plague. Accidental/mutational.
03. Global economic collapse, the result of which returns humanity back to a temporary or permanent medieval existence.
04. Annihilation via natural catastrophe. Cataclysmic geologic, cosmological event. Reversal of the Earth’s magnetic poles. Asteroids, comets, an unknown.
POSITIVE
01. Two of the best outcomes possible propel humans ever forward into an exciting, but (by modern standards) bizarre, unpredictable future.
02. Technical advancement that enables a recovery from prior, catastrophic circumstances. Or to prevent, circumvent such cataclysms.
03. Continued, long term survival, expansion, and prosperity that leads to eventual pseudo or actual omnipotence.
Additional problems of mind/language involve the management/control/suppression of residual and accentuated animal instincts. At the molecular level, evolutionary remnants that hamper emotional maturity. Neurosis, psychosis, a desire to follow, serve, and obey charismatic leaders. The “alpha male” syndrome. Latent devils, real and imagined, born of mind/language. Fanatical religious beliefs in particular.
Faced with inexplicable circumstances for which no meaningful purpose exists, humans fabricate belief systems supported and reinforced by rituals. Over time, identical myths and institutionalized superstitions become idealized, are made sacred and held beyond reproach. Even more, criticism or ridicule of a particular group’s beliefs incite anger, resentment, violence, ostracism and condemnation. If one is not religious, no matter the questionability of any number of so-called churches, the ecclesiastically challenged loner is considered either evil or, at best is prone to weak, faulty judgment and indecent behaviors. From whence springs the virtuous atheist? How spawned is the vile religious devotee?
Primitive inclinations to exhort, refine, and demonstrate its sublime qualities, unique in all the world, are precisely what defines humankind and separates us from all other lifeforms on earth. A criticism that is neither condemning nor judgmental. Such propensities may be exactly what drive humans into a future of prosperity and longevity.
The Golden Accident / The Birth of Conscious Brains, Self Awareness, and the Sentient Mind.
True intelligence, or mind, is not defined by an ability to act independently, with purposeful self-interest, or as a response to an environment in such a way as to enhance or secure one’s survival. Nor is it the ability to alter the environment in such ways that survival is promoted and maintained.
Animals are expert survivalists. Humans are at the mercy of most creatures which, armed with claws, fangs, acute senses and other faculties, are far better suited and equipped for living in a wilderness environment. Early humans were not satisfied with simply overcoming the dangers posed by their bestial rivals. Intelligence is not a defensive quality. It is pure offense. Where we are the hunter, the killer, the thinker and doer. Only secondarily, as a consequence of bigger brains, do we escape being killed ourselves. Do we then seek to change the environment to suit our less immediate needs. A hierarchy of food, sex, comfort, in that order. Eat better, more often, equals more healthy offspring, leisure time, equals improved living standards. And the appreciation of same.
The Computer Model Of Mind.
Ultimately, advances in artificial intelligence must lead to an authentic presence of actual mind. Nature tends to maximize survival skills, and mentality is merely an interesting tool found at the far end of a very long list. Being alive leads to consciousness, leads to intelligence, but not necessarily, to mind. Artificial input accelerates the process. Catastrophic change constantly shuffles the genetic deck.
The first level is life itself, as defined according to a variety of non-controversial clinical criteria. Microbes, by example. Modern computers are, by these standards, living organisms.
The second level is consciousness, which is the ability to choose from various courses of action based on a limited range of stimuli and instinctual response options. Ants to Zebras, as examples. Computers, again, compare favorably with these levels of awareness.
The third level involves basic intelligence. An ability to adapt a wide range of available behaviors to a diversity of environmental challenges and physical conditions. Whales, primates, as examples. A state only slightly beyond the limits of the most advanced forms of artificial intelligence.
The fourth level is mind. Total, self-aware intelligence. The awakened brain. The sentient being. Mind does not necessarily appear as a direct result of higher intelligence levels or brain size. Nor is it due solely to sophisticated faculties and associated cerebral structures, such as tissue folds and convolutions. Because human infants possess an innate aptitude for language, self awareness and other traits, the human brain itself houses some inner ability that is easily tapped, exploited, and developed. A combination of many anatomical structures may facilitate higher brain functions. The ability to vocalize sounds. A synergistic effect wherein the sum is greater than the individual values of constituent “parts”.
Artificial Intelligence, in order to awaken from its present comatose condition, must learn to ask questions -- especially “why”. Inquiry for its own sake, is an exclusively human trait. The meaning of irony is also essential, plus an appreciation for humor. Language is expedient and emotion-based. Intellect, an advantageous by-product, leads to perpetual cycles of invention, discovery, technology, then reinvention, rediscovery and so forth. Because emotion has been shown to be an electro-chemical reaction in brains, it should therefore be reproducible and more importantly, inducible.
With a tendency to remain dormant, if not encouraged, higher intellectual abilities can be repressed if restrained by external forces. Cases of human children raised by wolves, those of childhood abuse and neglect, as examples. Animals teach and promote survival skills only. Primates do much the same. Only humans encourage frivolous behaviors, promote dangerous activities, develop culture and enforce language skills. Simultaneously.
Humans possess two fortuitous attributes:
01. An anatomical ability to speak.
02. The compulsion to speak.
Each of these two elements reinforces the other. Though chimps communicate, they cannot and do not converse. While intricate, creation of a formal language may be the result of specific environmental dictates. In the absence of such pressures, accompanied by a lack of the necessary anatomical changes via mutation, improvements in the speech centers of the brain are neither favored nor selected for. Opposite conditions both favor and select for enhanced brain structures associated with language skills.
Language is mind. Mind is language. Mind/language is identical to space/time. Intra-communications among family, tribe, group, society. Inter-communication among societies, cultures, civilizations. Long term memory plus the cumulative memories of many generations, equals the continuous growth of intellectual evolution. Cooperation among all for the common good of all. The communal self-interest versus (in concert with) that of the individual. Symbiosis versus commensalism versus parasitism. Suppression of the personal for the societal good. Ability to recognize that the larger good reverts to the good of the individual.
Self-reflexivity. That we selfishly prosper by virtue of the healthy whole.
The Price of Glory.
Severe consequences and dangerous penalties result from the thinking and ideas inspired by enhanced, sentient brains. Warfare, the Seven Deadly Sins, misunderstandings and self-inflicted irrationalities. Dishonesty, self-indulgence, and intentional cruelty. The noble preservation of the mentally/physically disabled, which taps society’s limited available resources. Neurotic or psychotic individuals who, for one reason or another, fail to incorporate impulse control and self-restraint. Such persons pose extreme dangers to others and themselves. Individuals who suffer mild to extreme psychological pathologies. Such persons also pose extreme hazards to others and themselves. Both conditions may be one and the same. The propensity to enslave others to our personal will and whims.
Evidence exists that mind/language, though neither positive nor negative in an objective sense, may ultimately act counter to the evolutionary processes which spawned it. Such effects include a proclivity for self-destruction. Both at the personal level and culturally. Self-abuse plus cruelty to, abuse of, people, animals, and the environment.
Humankind is engaged in a life and death struggle for survival wherein it is pitted against itself. Against its own savagery, its historical, evolutionary roots. A race against time that is equal to any fictional adventure epic rife with intrigue, danger, and suspense. The conclusion of the story has yet to be written. Whether it can be finished at all is uncertain, for several different outcomes are possible:
NEGATIVE
01. Utter annihilation via weapons of mass destruction/warfare/terrorism.
02. Extermination via biological plague. Accidental/mutational.
03. Global economic collapse, the result of which returns humanity back to a temporary or permanent medieval existence.
04. Annihilation via natural catastrophe. Cataclysmic geologic, cosmological event. Reversal of the Earth’s magnetic poles. Asteroids, comets, an unknown.
POSITIVE
01. Two of the best outcomes possible propel humans ever forward into an exciting, but (by modern standards) bizarre, unpredictable future.
02. Technical advancement that enables a recovery from prior, catastrophic circumstances. Or to prevent, circumvent such cataclysms.
03. Continued, long term survival, expansion, and prosperity that leads to eventual pseudo or actual omnipotence.
Additional problems of mind/language involve the management/control/suppression of residual and accentuated animal instincts. At the molecular level, evolutionary remnants that hamper emotional maturity. Neurosis, psychosis, a desire to follow, serve, and obey charismatic leaders. The “alpha male” syndrome. Latent devils, real and imagined, born of mind/language. Fanatical religious beliefs in particular.
Faced with inexplicable circumstances for which no meaningful purpose exists, humans fabricate belief systems supported and reinforced by rituals. Over time, identical myths and institutionalized superstitions become idealized, are made sacred and held beyond reproach. Even more, criticism or ridicule of a particular group’s beliefs incite anger, resentment, violence, ostracism and condemnation. If one is not religious, no matter the questionability of any number of so-called churches, the ecclesiastically challenged loner is considered either evil or, at best is prone to weak, faulty judgment and indecent behaviors. From whence springs the virtuous atheist? How spawned is the vile religious devotee?
Primitive inclinations to exhort, refine, and demonstrate its sublime qualities, unique in all the world, are precisely what defines humankind and separates us from all other lifeforms on earth. A criticism that is neither condemning nor judgmental. Such propensities may be exactly what drive humans into a future of prosperity and longevity.
Fig. 5. Let us hope that chrome doesn't become a racial color.
e20
FUTURES
Entertainment, Science & Technology, Robotics, Medicine
Employment, Politics, Transportation, Religion & Psychology
Once entirely separate from one another, the qualities of entertainment (passive theater) and amusement (active involvement) will merge intimately with the joint fields of science, technology, and psychology. Two-dimensional film/video will evolve entirely into three-dimensional virtual realities. Ultimately indistinguishable from true reality, additions of aromatics, temperature variances, are blended into the audio/visual experience. Holograms, both transparent and opaque. Human psychological tolerances are maximized, with dangerous, unpredictable ramifications. True immersion makes indistinguishable what is real from what is not. Very addictive, seductive. Certain forms may be criminalized accordingly.
Robotics replaces human contact and intimacy. Robot intelligence increases and evolves into rudimentary consciousness. The sudden or gradual advent of awakening self-awareness, self-interest (survival) aspects of artificial intelligence. Results are unknown and highly unstable. Possibly violent in nature, without artificially programmed ethics or moral inhibitions as safeguards. Some robots mimic human anatomy, many do not. They possess their own aesthetics. Robots that look and act like animals, but with superior intelligence. The house cat that manifests human qualities. The ultimate anthropomorphization.
Except for random viral mutations, most diseases are conquered. Cloning is largely abandoned as unnecessary. Used as a livestock food source only. The cow who can feel no pain. A new and popular vegetarianism movement. Revivification of extinct animal species. Creation of whole new species, experimental and computer designed. Robotics as a viable addition/substitute. Superiority of artificial tissues and organs.
Human aging is halted. Lifespans become unlimited. Death is voluntary, with legally-assisted-suicides. VT (Voluntary Termination). TT (Temporary Termination via predetermined dates of revival). Sleep for fifty years, then wake to a whole new world.
New and old religions must account for the growing omnipotence of the human race. Especially its inestimable potential for creating and manipulating unlimited life forms. New religious wars, uprisings possible. Terrorism a persistent threat.
New animals are genetically engineered for Outer Space. “Off-world” relocation/colonization/food. Humans engineered in similar fashion. Strength, endurance, size, others. Procedures are closely associated with new field of “bio-robotics” (Robiotics).
Deep water habitats established. Comparable in size, sophistication, to land-based cities. Such enclosures possess advantages of being isolated from surface weather conditions.
Space exploration becomes privatized and affordable, fashionable and necessary. The great exodus from Earth, when new frontiers appeal to many for whom life on Earth has become crowded or tedious. An obvious employment bonanza on other worlds.
Loss of many personal freedoms due to increased private and governmental surveillance, testing procedures. Offset by gains in areas of more esoteric liberties, such as drugs, sex, and vocational opportunities. Mostly Libertarian in style and function. Fewer prohibitions, but with swift judgments and severe punishments. Especially true for off-world colonists (Analogies to the Old West).
“Authentication” protocols become mandatory for almost everything, every aspect of living. Needed in a world where seeing is not believing. Where virtual reality eliminates all faith and trust in human senses. Where trusting oneself, one’s own perceptions, experiences, are always suspect. Police forces which prosecute for permanent versus temporary damages.
Schools change to “camps”. Great emphasis placed on mental and physical training. Women cease to have normal childbirth. Private parenting of children is a privilege, not a right, and not random. Advent of true, test-tube babies. Most women and men obtain children from special clinics, state-run orphanages. Many forms of genetic engineering are acceptable and commonplace.
The crowning achievement of human discovery and invention is accomplished: The control and manipulation of “memory”. Memory is experience, experience is memory. Life is memory, memory is life. Memory is reality, reality is memory. Interrelated to studies and research into “time”. Time is memory, memory is time. Usage produces assets and drawbacks. Relief from grief, heartache, boredom, trauma. Such advances catapult psychology to unimaginable levels of sophistication and application.
Long space flights made possible due to memory control. Drugs vs. hardware vs. software. Downloading/uploading memories into new bodies, both human and animal. Robotic machines with human brains as opposed to humanoid robots with artificial intelligence. Sending hard drives into space for 10,000 years or more. Upon arrival at a given destination, a body is created, not awakened, and the mind then fed into an awaiting but empty "shell".
Refinement and perfection of nano technologies. Nano-robots (Nabs) become an entire industry, comparable to their larger counterparts. Whole new micro-worlds, micro-societies are evolved, populated by intelligent, sentient Nabs. Nabs are injected into human and animal bloodstreams. Nabs developed as an added “skin”. A new symbiotic/parasitic union of human and machine that is adopted/adapted as a permanent condition. Insertion of Nabs into larger robots, making these self repairing, self evolving.
Development and perfection of micro-technology at the level of atoms and molecules. The miniaturization of the human fetus. Invention and construction of entire micro domains, machines, computers. Memory transference from Macro to micro. Vice versa. Memory is money, is bought and sold as a common commodity. Criminal considerations as imperatives. Reduction, reducibility as its own enterprise. How small can a brain exist, in terms of atoms, and still retain/exhibit sentience?
Nano-robots explore space in the form of inexpensive micro probes sent out in vast numbers. Nano probes travel at the speed of light or faster. Photon technologies where the properties of "mass" are nullified or circumvented, permitting faster-than-light (FTL) travel.
Larger/smaller robots become companions/pets/lovers/partners with humans. A new sexual revolution. Prolonged physical pleasures become possible, routine and normal. Drug effects are synthesized, made safe, virtual, and replace actual hard drugs themselves. Memory manipulation conquers dangerous side-affects of addiction.
Earth is relegated to home world outpost only. A vacation spot. Continued breakthroughs in control and manipulation of time. Travel into the future, but not the past, is made possible. Past is reviewed via manipulated reconstructions. Ramifications of other dimensions, both parallel and oblique, are impossible to predict, but are likely to play a role. The same is true for matter/anti-matter considerations. Control and assimilation of such interactions into human life are also impossible to imagine, and may completely change the "rules" by which we currently live -- and think.
Advanced medical techniques add to an indefinite lifespan. Humans, pets, the limited remaining number of naturally surviving wild species, cease to die of natural causes. Most animal species cease to go extinct due to cloning techniques. Many extinct species are “reborn”. Animals and insects are bred for positive, utilitarian purposes. Mortality rates decline as last of elderly humans die off. Death becomes relatively unknown, except for catastrophic circumstances. Catastrophes involving death are offset by cloned memory banks/restoration of personal histories via some form of “back-ups”. Problems of old age eliminated. Physical appearance options are unlimited, via birth choices, laser/plastic surgery procedures. Insertions into new/alternate physical bodies.
Genetic engineering combines animals with humans. New races evolve with increased, enhanced senses, agilities, aesthetics. Extraterrestrial considerations. No true “source” individuals/specimens remain. All become variations of extinct originals.
Once the limit on traveling at light speed is broken, Black Holes are explored and exploited. Terraforming of other worlds leads to creation of whole new worlds. New stars are ignited, created from stellar resources. Planets are seeded. Collectivized Humanity becomes God-like. Pain, suffering, other hardships, which have been all but eradicated, are then purposely experienced, learned from, taught on a virtual level. Included as mandatory curriculum for children. “Refresher” courses in pain and deprivation. Memory is always the key.
Ultimate unification of animate/inanimate. Blending of human consciousness (memory, self-identity) with inanimate objects. The astronaut is the spaceship, the ship the astronaut. The sentient plant, tree, and other vegetation. Total synthesization of food and nutrition sources. Plants are no longer grown or eaten as food.
Information (memory) overloads. Psychology must become the new God. Coping with infinite amounts, varieties of information, unlimited possible physical/emotional experiences. Disengaging from the whole. Intentional fragmentation, defragmentation. Memory becomes selective, storable, retrievable, accessible, transferable, negotiable, saleable, purchasable, reversible, alterable.
Robotics replaces human contact and intimacy. Robot intelligence increases and evolves into rudimentary consciousness. The sudden or gradual advent of awakening self-awareness, self-interest (survival) aspects of artificial intelligence. Results are unknown and highly unstable. Possibly violent in nature, without artificially programmed ethics or moral inhibitions as safeguards. Some robots mimic human anatomy, many do not. They possess their own aesthetics. Robots that look and act like animals, but with superior intelligence. The house cat that manifests human qualities. The ultimate anthropomorphization.
Except for random viral mutations, most diseases are conquered. Cloning is largely abandoned as unnecessary. Used as a livestock food source only. The cow who can feel no pain. A new and popular vegetarianism movement. Revivification of extinct animal species. Creation of whole new species, experimental and computer designed. Robotics as a viable addition/substitute. Superiority of artificial tissues and organs.
Human aging is halted. Lifespans become unlimited. Death is voluntary, with legally-assisted-suicides. VT (Voluntary Termination). TT (Temporary Termination via predetermined dates of revival). Sleep for fifty years, then wake to a whole new world.
New and old religions must account for the growing omnipotence of the human race. Especially its inestimable potential for creating and manipulating unlimited life forms. New religious wars, uprisings possible. Terrorism a persistent threat.
New animals are genetically engineered for Outer Space. “Off-world” relocation/colonization/food. Humans engineered in similar fashion. Strength, endurance, size, others. Procedures are closely associated with new field of “bio-robotics” (Robiotics).
Deep water habitats established. Comparable in size, sophistication, to land-based cities. Such enclosures possess advantages of being isolated from surface weather conditions.
Space exploration becomes privatized and affordable, fashionable and necessary. The great exodus from Earth, when new frontiers appeal to many for whom life on Earth has become crowded or tedious. An obvious employment bonanza on other worlds.
Loss of many personal freedoms due to increased private and governmental surveillance, testing procedures. Offset by gains in areas of more esoteric liberties, such as drugs, sex, and vocational opportunities. Mostly Libertarian in style and function. Fewer prohibitions, but with swift judgments and severe punishments. Especially true for off-world colonists (Analogies to the Old West).
“Authentication” protocols become mandatory for almost everything, every aspect of living. Needed in a world where seeing is not believing. Where virtual reality eliminates all faith and trust in human senses. Where trusting oneself, one’s own perceptions, experiences, are always suspect. Police forces which prosecute for permanent versus temporary damages.
Schools change to “camps”. Great emphasis placed on mental and physical training. Women cease to have normal childbirth. Private parenting of children is a privilege, not a right, and not random. Advent of true, test-tube babies. Most women and men obtain children from special clinics, state-run orphanages. Many forms of genetic engineering are acceptable and commonplace.
The crowning achievement of human discovery and invention is accomplished: The control and manipulation of “memory”. Memory is experience, experience is memory. Life is memory, memory is life. Memory is reality, reality is memory. Interrelated to studies and research into “time”. Time is memory, memory is time. Usage produces assets and drawbacks. Relief from grief, heartache, boredom, trauma. Such advances catapult psychology to unimaginable levels of sophistication and application.
Long space flights made possible due to memory control. Drugs vs. hardware vs. software. Downloading/uploading memories into new bodies, both human and animal. Robotic machines with human brains as opposed to humanoid robots with artificial intelligence. Sending hard drives into space for 10,000 years or more. Upon arrival at a given destination, a body is created, not awakened, and the mind then fed into an awaiting but empty "shell".
Refinement and perfection of nano technologies. Nano-robots (Nabs) become an entire industry, comparable to their larger counterparts. Whole new micro-worlds, micro-societies are evolved, populated by intelligent, sentient Nabs. Nabs are injected into human and animal bloodstreams. Nabs developed as an added “skin”. A new symbiotic/parasitic union of human and machine that is adopted/adapted as a permanent condition. Insertion of Nabs into larger robots, making these self repairing, self evolving.
Development and perfection of micro-technology at the level of atoms and molecules. The miniaturization of the human fetus. Invention and construction of entire micro domains, machines, computers. Memory transference from Macro to micro. Vice versa. Memory is money, is bought and sold as a common commodity. Criminal considerations as imperatives. Reduction, reducibility as its own enterprise. How small can a brain exist, in terms of atoms, and still retain/exhibit sentience?
Nano-robots explore space in the form of inexpensive micro probes sent out in vast numbers. Nano probes travel at the speed of light or faster. Photon technologies where the properties of "mass" are nullified or circumvented, permitting faster-than-light (FTL) travel.
Larger/smaller robots become companions/pets/lovers/partners with humans. A new sexual revolution. Prolonged physical pleasures become possible, routine and normal. Drug effects are synthesized, made safe, virtual, and replace actual hard drugs themselves. Memory manipulation conquers dangerous side-affects of addiction.
Earth is relegated to home world outpost only. A vacation spot. Continued breakthroughs in control and manipulation of time. Travel into the future, but not the past, is made possible. Past is reviewed via manipulated reconstructions. Ramifications of other dimensions, both parallel and oblique, are impossible to predict, but are likely to play a role. The same is true for matter/anti-matter considerations. Control and assimilation of such interactions into human life are also impossible to imagine, and may completely change the "rules" by which we currently live -- and think.
Advanced medical techniques add to an indefinite lifespan. Humans, pets, the limited remaining number of naturally surviving wild species, cease to die of natural causes. Most animal species cease to go extinct due to cloning techniques. Many extinct species are “reborn”. Animals and insects are bred for positive, utilitarian purposes. Mortality rates decline as last of elderly humans die off. Death becomes relatively unknown, except for catastrophic circumstances. Catastrophes involving death are offset by cloned memory banks/restoration of personal histories via some form of “back-ups”. Problems of old age eliminated. Physical appearance options are unlimited, via birth choices, laser/plastic surgery procedures. Insertions into new/alternate physical bodies.
Genetic engineering combines animals with humans. New races evolve with increased, enhanced senses, agilities, aesthetics. Extraterrestrial considerations. No true “source” individuals/specimens remain. All become variations of extinct originals.
Once the limit on traveling at light speed is broken, Black Holes are explored and exploited. Terraforming of other worlds leads to creation of whole new worlds. New stars are ignited, created from stellar resources. Planets are seeded. Collectivized Humanity becomes God-like. Pain, suffering, other hardships, which have been all but eradicated, are then purposely experienced, learned from, taught on a virtual level. Included as mandatory curriculum for children. “Refresher” courses in pain and deprivation. Memory is always the key.
Ultimate unification of animate/inanimate. Blending of human consciousness (memory, self-identity) with inanimate objects. The astronaut is the spaceship, the ship the astronaut. The sentient plant, tree, and other vegetation. Total synthesization of food and nutrition sources. Plants are no longer grown or eaten as food.
Information (memory) overloads. Psychology must become the new God. Coping with infinite amounts, varieties of information, unlimited possible physical/emotional experiences. Disengaging from the whole. Intentional fragmentation, defragmentation. Memory becomes selective, storable, retrievable, accessible, transferable, negotiable, saleable, purchasable, reversible, alterable.
e21
WHETHER FORECAST
Though the next few decades will both deliver many surprises and fulfill expected gains, the distant future will evolve as an ominous, eerie, difficult-to-forecast shadowy blur of incomprehensibility. Certain new discoveries are likely to change everything. Assuming that things proceed without a major cataclysm or global catastrophe -- such that a recovery to our current level of technology is made indefinite or impossible -- the next few centuries will create an ever widening gap between our present notions of the real world, and a view of reality to come that is so different from current perceptions, that the language to describe or explain it does not yet exist.
Many if not most people would shudder in disbelief or tremble with incredulous anger if they could somehow perceive the world yet to be. It is both fun and shocking to speculate, from a somewhat informal and barely enlightened perspective, whether we become gods or demons. Or, as now, minor league players at both.
Imagine, just for a moment, the most shocking, outrageous, unbelievable conditions that might exist in another hundred years or so. Neither good nor bad, just strange, weird, bizarre, and on the very fringe of understanding. Now imagine such speculations, regardless of how perverse, aberrant, decadent, or impossible, as being even less amazing than the actual world awaiting the grown child who is born one year from today.
Many if not most people would shudder in disbelief or tremble with incredulous anger if they could somehow perceive the world yet to be. It is both fun and shocking to speculate, from a somewhat informal and barely enlightened perspective, whether we become gods or demons. Or, as now, minor league players at both.
Imagine, just for a moment, the most shocking, outrageous, unbelievable conditions that might exist in another hundred years or so. Neither good nor bad, just strange, weird, bizarre, and on the very fringe of understanding. Now imagine such speculations, regardless of how perverse, aberrant, decadent, or impossible, as being even less amazing than the actual world awaiting the grown child who is born one year from today.
e22
The RELIGIOUS ATHEIST
"A religion old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the universe
as revealed by modern science, might be able to draw forth reserves
of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths.
Sooner or later, such a religion will emerge."
-- Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot (1994)
Strong arguments can be submitted in favor of the need for some form of ultimate justice. In a world where indecent wrongdoers and perpetrators of evil may prosper over long periods of time, often with utter impunity, righteous indignation cries out for the vengeful punishment of rampant wickedness. If not in this life, then afterwards in the next. Likewise, those who offer aid and comfort to the weak, the sick, to ones less fortunate, should be rewarded for their unselfish deeds. If not in this life, then after.
That a desire exists for reward and punishment is hardly in doubt; the human psyche thrives on both. The virtuous citizen wants -- even demands -- a well delineated purpose for living a moral life, plus a just end for those who choose goodness and kindness and decency. And especially an equal reckoning for those who opt to live a less dignified lifestyle via the misery of others.
Ethical choices as embraced by the individual, are mostly inspired by a respect for, and a belief in, an ultimate code of moral conduct. Actions that honor the wisdom and guidelines set forth by those who worship and speak for the Highest of powers. It is interesting that two very important human concerns, namely need and want, regardless of merit, represent two major expressions for which the natural world seems to have little if any regard. They are conditions upon which no particular significance is placed, and perhaps least relevant of nature’s great schemes. Yet, in human terms, needs and wants represent a complex pairing that remains among the most critical of social and cultural debates.
So true is this axiom about human appetites that if one’s desire for justice, their need for its implementation, is threatened or spurned, then that person’s life plus the lives of all others, may cease to have importance or value. Absent justice in one form or another, all of nature -- the entire universe -- is henceforth perceived as a giant cosmological farce, the practical joke to end all, a horrific comedy that plays dark and meaningless, devoid of sanity and worth.
Without Divine reason and judgment to give the world its ethical and moral laws, to provide a coherent, consistent framework for human behavior, people are permissibly free, it is argued, to pursue whatever amoral actions are both expedient and gratifying. To the utter exclusion and expense of every other consideration based solely on notions of courtesy and decency. Except those, of course, that may interfere with personal freedom itself. Or endanger one’s personal safety.
Contrary to the popular belief (in some circles) that religion and ritual are basically for the dim-witted, doctrines of faith appeal to many of the brightest, most secure and successful, well grounded individuals in society. Once adopted, inculcated within one’s very soul, such beliefs resolve and put-to-rest some of humankind’s most vexing and perplexing, philosophical enigmas. However, if a person is sensitive enough, cares enough, loves more than is good for them to do so, knows more than what is safe for them to understand, these same questions if left unanswered, often lead to disastrous personal consequences. A wanderlust without direction or circumstance, minus purpose and destination.
So crucial is an attachment to ritualized religious beliefs which reinforce one’s personal and private sense of cosmological structure and order, of basic right and wrong, that the adherent cannot imagine, cannot fathom willingly or otherwise, the argumentative position of others who profess opposing ideas. Usually kind and compassionate, a true believer is easily angered, frequently indignant, often intolerant of opposition. And for no minor reasons. Aggressive opponents of religion like to suggest how other, equally potent principles exist beyond -- instead of -- Divine guidance. They contend that their heretical doctrines provide reason enough for proper human conduct. That ethics and good character need not be based on religious dogma. That scruples virtually identical to those held aloft by the religious devotee are often and equally embraced by nonbelievers, but for entirely different reasons. That secular ideologies can demonstrate how people, on their own, come to learn and understand via routine life experiences, the basic differences between right and wrong. That religion should only enhance, but never supply the sole motivation or rational source of such life-enhancing epiphanies. Religious orthodoxy, though positive in many ways, only reinforces our innate tendencies to choose decent behavior over rationalized indecent acts. Reliance upon religion for revelations of truth are inherently dangerous, yet only slightly more than one's equal dependence on secular science and philosophy.
Admittedly one big difference lies in the fact that religious principles shepherd whole flocks, while the irreligious persuade and influence only individuals or small groups, and rarely more. Another weakness of atheism is its reliance on what are called situational ethics. Flexible, spontaneous rules by which the individual, him or herself, based upon personal experience or conjecture, assesses right or wrong according to impulsive, highly subjective criteria, including diverse, jumbled philosophic definitions, and some level of likely inadequate information or reasoning.
Whereas many judge religion by the worst of its advocates, the qualities of atheism are often defined, by comparison, via cited examples of its best proponents. Self-righteous atheists and agnostics like to tout the great philosophers, writers, scientists and others who have shirked religion. While in the same breath, they conveniently ignore historic, frequently satanic, sadistic evildoers of similar ilk; disbelievers love to cite a particular Catholic Pope who killed some birds because their singing disturbed his peace and quiet. It is a fair and reasonable assumption that most atheists fall well below the very marks they use to criticize the faith-based actions of others. That an atheist ever develops any compassion, good will and character, seems remarkable and gives rise to questions of why and how such a person ever chooses decency over vileness. By comparison, the success and benefits of religion are generally far superior. But for reasons both obvious and subtle. More important, perhaps, is why and how the secular individualist finds cause to live a life of virtue equal to many if not most of his or her religion-centered brethren. Neither more ethical, nor less. Neither more moral, nor less.
The human condition is notable for its shared attributes, as well as a proliferation of unique characteristics among individuals. Most persons suffer, with equal effect, from common neurotic foibles, insecurities, impulsive poor judgment and other similar problems. They embrace sympathetic or compassionate affinities for humor, affairs of the heart and of the soul. Per the latter, the majority of people, again with good reason, long for an existence free of pain and distress, both physical and emotional. If not in this life, then after. There is a yearning for final judgment where the bad are punished and the good rewarded.
Persons from all walks of life, from every corner of the globe, relate to the varied and numerous aspects of life which give us enjoyment and heartache, elation and depression. And in such respects society is rarely divided by splits among Christians and Jews, atheists and others. As concerns the basic struggles of everyday living, survival is everyone’s religion. All attend the same church and most contribute something to the commensal, communal plate.
Many, however, steal from the donated offerings. In a metaphorical sense, they would, for personal gain, murder their fellow parishioners, even burn down the church itself. It is from these individuals, aberrational and sociopathic, especially when empowered by wealth or position, that whole civilizations turn divisive, self-destructive, fearful, accusative and judgmental. But understandably so, given the incompetent bureaucratic systems that govern human affairs.
Imperfect laws and inadequate justice give way, and sway, to idealized concepts of perfect laws and perfect justice. Concern prevails that lawless behavior breeds more of the same. That amoral acts promote more harmful forms of immoralities, which in turn seduce others to falter. Belief endures that such libertine freedoms weaken the social fabric and that family, children, and lawful order is diminished accordingly. Let alone jeopardizing the personal safety and security of innocent, law-abiding citizens.
Civilizations operate on justice systems whose laws are largely designed to deter (punish) the worst of its citizenry. Rather than, in a more perfect world, a judicial structure where principles of reward recruit a culture’s most gifted, talented, and thoughtful members. Much of society’s resources, energy, manpower and money are siphoned away by chasing and arresting, adjudicating and jailing, anti-social misfits and the pathologically insane. Especially as regards the alcohol, tobacco, firearm and drug wars. And particularly the price paid by (impact on) innocent victims. The same law-abiding civilians for whom security continues as a crucial, critical concern.
The Anarchy Of Order.
Intelligent, sincere people realize the inherent futility of bureaucratized justice, the ages-old interplay of crime and punishment. With much consternation such persons accept the flaws, miscarriages, unfairness, prejudicial, racist, and other shortcomings of most courts. They understand that compared to mob rule, star chambers, or vigilantism, imperfect laws are the best method humans have yet designed for dealing with a cruel world populated by cold, crafty, often sadistic criminals. Rather than allow private citizens to dispense justice on their own, a situation fraught with innumerable problems, society takes upon itself, in the name of all its citizens, to seek satisfaction on behalf of the wronged. Additionally the lives and safety of an uninvolved citizenry are also protected. Or so goes the intent.
True satisfaction and solace can only be derived via Absolute Justice. Something found solely, it is reasoned and believed, in another world at another time, where verdicts are rendered, rewards and punishments administered by an infallible Judge. Opponents, nonbelievers, or those indifferent and apathetic despite the Rulings to come, are thought to face harsh punishments in some ways equal to that suffered by enthusiastic transgressors.
Thus at least one version of peace placates the moral mobs who cry out for holy blood, preferably spilled from unholy lawbreakers. To great extent, the righteous atheist too, cries out for vengeance against the evil and wicked among us. The Secular Sheriff does not, however, wish to take any chances. No desire exists to allow for extenuating circumstances that a compassionate God might weigh in favor of a lighter, more lenient sentence. No last minute repenting and forgiveness for the offending, offensive perpetrator.
The ultimate irony is that in the short term, the atheist seems more interested in justice than his or her religious counterpart. The infidel would strive for a more politically libertarian system that would establish a Heavenly tribunal (so desired by the faithful) here on Earth today. Not in a thousand years hence. Or never. God is free to do with a villain’s soul as He or She sees fit, but leave the living body to us nonbelievers.
A righteous atheist is an oxymoron, many might contend. They would say how it is not possible to worship goodness in the absence of God. Goodness, it is argued, springs from God and is inseparable from Him. Others would strongly disagree. Atheists mostly, I imagine.
No such thing as goodness exists, or evil, for that matter. Not as things. Both are abstract labels attached to behaviors and events that either promote life or harm it. The great humanitarian, Albert Schweitzer, defined good as that which supports life, and evil as harming it. One cannot hold goodness in the palm of a hand. But one can hold and comfort a child cradled in one’s arms. Evil is not a symbol or a flag, but both can be brandished by thugs who seek to murder both bodies and spirits. Religious, philosophical convictions and aspirations are inborn within human consciousness. One need not necessarily be taught the value of virtue, beyond the disciplines required to curb childhood impudence. In this sense, goodness and evil are such potent, omnipresent forces in human life, they seem real, alive, and vital to our very existence. It seems entirely rational to me, the concept of worshiping Good, as if it were a living, breathing power unto itself. Unfortunately the opposite is also true as many attend haughty altars of wickedness.
To a large degree, morals are learned naturally, through trial and error, via experience, positive and negative feedback, and constant reinforcement. We learn limits and self-restraint from attitudes vested purely in self-interest and self-preservation. We learn compassion because we discover that others share our same feelings of joy and sorrow and satisfaction born of camaraderies. Bonds of friendship born of gratitude and recompense.
This is not to suggest that scruples come of their own accord without nurturing and encouragement. Though a blank slate at birth, not unlike a new, unwritten computer hard drive, all the initial programming required for kindness or cruelty already exists. It is only the emphasis placed on specific attributes, then accessed accordingly, that determines priorities of either a constructive or destructive nature. Societies simply mold or prioritize what are innately human qualities. For better or worse. History demonstrates that individuals, on their own and for whatever reasons, frequently realize the importance of fostering our better selves. By virtue of epiphanies and the like, we come to appreciate how it is in the best interest of everyone to do so, but especially as relates to ourselves. Maturity is measured against the joy we feel by another’s happiness. Failure to learn this most important, fundamental lesson, imperils one’s very soul, be that as it may.
Many condemn the endorphin-charged mania of seemingly hypnotized religious devotees and zealots. Then these same judgmentalists simultaneously applaud and encourage the identical euphoric adulation when manifested as patriotism, nationalism, or particularly sports-ism. We condemn the preacher who empties the pockets of the sick and indigent, while we stuff the wallets of sports announcers and bank accounts of players who prey upon ritualized, frenzied bloodlust.
Without forthcoming major modifications, religion (in general) is on a fast track to obsolescence. Though science and technology make poor substitutes for the empathy found in traditional religious faith and worship, they do propel humankind to increasingly higher planes of intellectual sophistication. Soon, when life becomes an easily created and manipulated commodity -- one of the last strongholds of the faithful who believe life is the sole domain of a singularly empowered Creator -- religion will face its greatest challenge.
It is likely that in the distant future, God will be worshiped as a natural force rather than an intelligence. Not nature itself necessarily, but something more all encompassing. Probably some unifying principle yet to be discovered or invented. Perhaps the ultimate unification of the micro world of Quantum Mechanics with the macro universe of Einstein. The current concept of a mindful God allows for prayer and the inherent potential for two-way communication. Orthodox belief, if stretched, further begs an uncomfortable metaphor wherein the grown child, in the form of advanced human civilization, confronts the now elderly babysitter, God, whose activities at the time He babysat were those of indifference, ambivalence, silence, and an utter lack of conscientious caretaking. In the Earthly nursery, a wall poster listed a multitude of rituals and commandments that defined good and bad behavior. But neither bandage nor compassion, in a very real sense, was ever applied to the countless childhood injuries of both flesh and spirit.
The creed of an atheist demands that, were God to exist, He would need to face His accusers and answer for His unconscionable apathy. Instead of war crimes, indictments of criminal negligence might be brought, with accusations of a failure to protect, to nurture and serve, plus an inability or unwillingness to render aid and alleviate suffering. Additionally, a failure to devise and implement systems for sustaining life that were less severe and far less cruel.
The solitary method of learning from hardships, though expedient and efficient, also includes torture and torment of the innocent, abuse and punishment of animals and children. Were some form of consciousness at work, the Design, a perverse process at best, is arguably sadistic in nature. A further indication of God’s abysmal incompetence as overseer and caretaker of a depraved, indecent world of His own making. God is seen as a renegade, outlaw, hypocrite, in complete violation of the very principles demanded of His own worshipers. The wronged now demand a necessary trial of God where humankind, past and present, sits as judge and jury. Proposed is the likely prospect that humans themselves will someday become peer divinities, and will hopefully exercise their powers with more gentility, kindness, grace and intelligence.
Witness the nouveau, Neo-God-Collective that celebrates its amoral adulation for the beauty of some principle that unifies the four forces of nature: Gravity, Electricity, the Strong and Weak Nuclear forces. The newly empowered Ape who chooses compassion over expedience.
So outrageous, sacrilegious, and unacceptable is the foregoing scenario as described, that the only reasonable, rational answer possible describes an autonomous, Godless universe. Ultimately, the atheist accuses no One, and either awaits the glorious human achievements yet to develop, or anticipates the worst from an unworthy, incorrigible species.
Choosing Choices.
A person’s decision to believe in a peaceable, functional, and productive doctrine that is likely false, could be sharply contrasted to (compared with) their refusal to accept a more sober, even mentally destructive revelation that was likely based on truth. That would replace one understanding of reality with another, the only difference being the authenticity of the one, and fraudulence of the other. An irony exists whereby the former condition, where one clings to what is demonstrably untrue, is preferable, even desirable in most cases. This is because facts alone do not bring order and direction to both the individual and society. Knowledge, in and of itself, does little more than promote and sanction amoral behaviors whose ethics may vary widely according to circumstance or whim.
It is difficult to distinguish one who is at genuine intellectual odds with a belief in God, from an individual whose own unresolved psychological disorders manifest themselves by a denial of God. A belief that the universe is Godless, that God is dead, that nature is mindless, without reason or purpose, inevitably results in some form of irreconcilable, though often subtle, mental disturbance.
A universe without a Creator is so traumatic a concept for most people, that the mind grows numb from prolonged contemplation. The stakes are such that under other conditions, similar explanations and rationalizations about the origin of something, of anything comparable, would be readily dismissed. But in the case of religion, instead of predictable and expected skepticism, unprovable absurdities are enthusiastically embraced.
Just as anger is the result of electrochemical responses in brains, and propensity for rage varies among individuals, the exclusively human gullibility as regards religious histrionics may result from cerebral structures and chemicals that also vary from person to person. Some biophysical model exists that is similar for most, but apparently differs for some. Too much of one enzyme, too little of another, might be all that separates the priest from the hedonist. A principle that is not hard and fast, but plays into the array of other forces at work within a person’s psychological makeup.
Arguments & Questions Opposing / Supporting The Existence Of A Supreme Creator.
It is often said by kindhearted, well meaning people, that evolution does not necessarily deny the existence of God. That both beliefs can and do exist in harmony with one another. Indeed that Darwinism is easily one of the means by which God has governed and continues to monitor the cosmos. Unfortunately such a "feel good" proposition is completely fallacious. Here's why: even a rudimentary understanding of the process of natural selection leads to a realization that it represents a sequence of events entirely independent of God. The whole idea behind evolution is that it functions very well on its own -- in the absence of an intelligent and unnecessary Creator. And in so doing, eliminates the requirement for intervention. The question is also begged as to why a God would even exist at all, and what purpose is served by that existence. Other than that of an interfering dabbler.
Because science remains unable to answer the most critical of all questions, namely where and how matter originated within a vacuous void, it is assumed that only an omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent almighty Creator could have accomplished the deed. Could have pulled all manner of stellar rabbits from a Big Bang hat.
Given the Big having already Banged, science is capable of taking things from there and arriving here, where we are today. Not a smooth, step-by-step process, but a stumbling gait on a pothole-riddled road that, none the less, weaves inexorably home. Working backward, no reason appears to thwart the idea that some natural process or event, as yet undiscovered, is responsible for the genesis of all matter. No reason, that is, except for the notion of God. In which case process, as an idea, is forfeit altogether.
But why the Bang? Why then, and from what nothingness was the Big culled and collected, gravitationally compressed, then ignited? The questions themselves seem too simple, seem somehow off-the-mark, to miss whatever core premise or machinations lie at the heart of the matter. Literally and figuratively. That the universe possesses a lifespan, measured in years, seems absurd because one wonders what came before, then after.
One answer, of course, is God. But what again, exactly, was the question? That He has always been? And just recently (judging by the age of the universe in general, the Earth in particular) got around to fussing with human destinies? These answers, like the questions, seem too simple, again missing the gist of whatever happened, is happening, is truly going on, went on, and will continue to go on.
It is not so much that the genuine atheist disbelieves in or denies the existence of God, but that the whole business, including the clumsy guesswork of scientific speculation, leaves one in a philosophic quagmire of partial insight and complete frustration. No nuts and bolts pragmatist worth their skeptical wrench can, for even a moment, honestly believe that some form of gender specific, all powerful Entity gives a rat’s behind about the billions of lunatics running around on some dust speck drifting about the desolate outback of some ordinary galaxy. One that is little different from millions and billions of others exactly like it. And let alone in a million-billion other dimensions as well.
By the same token, human life is a rather marvelous, remarkable and spectacular event amid all of nature’s otherwise grungy hubbub. Some accounting needs to be made of it and should be made of it. A tidy orderliness permeates all the chaos, all the sound and all the fury. The singular hope for human salvation, for saving it from itself, from its own eagerness to destroy as well as create, may exist solely in the form of moral guideposts. Fortunately for the more pacifistic atheists, followers of religious imperatives are sufficient in number to subdue and restrain the regressive setbacks perpetrated by a powerful minority of sociopaths and malcontents.
It is very much an us against them. In this respect, decent, law-abiding atheists, agnostics, and devout believers are unified, much as Jews and Christians, against the real threats posed by those who possess a philosophic belief in nothing at all. Let alone concern for the welfare of strangers. Such enemies of virtue and honor include individuals and groups, even whole governments, for whom no principles direct a common respect for anything. Unfortunately, rigid doctrines that lay claim to exclusive truths, and to pure, sanctimonious sources from which human decency is spawned, tend to alienate the positive, sympathetic counter-forces that seek truth in the absence of faith.
Of Interest Only To Ourselves.
Based upon all the foregoing considerations, it is thoughtfully asserted that a Godless universe, by its very anarchical nature as it affects human destinies, cries out all the more for justice, demands reason in the face of the unreasonable and unfathomable, seeking joy and humility amid the cold dispassion of meaningless existence.
By contrast, given a cosmos governed by Rational Omnipotence, where all scores are eventually settled, all debts paid in full, hatreds laid to rest, and rewards bestowed for obedience and contrition, a certain serenity is available to all who subscribe. A peace-of-mind that, like an unending sunrise, shall forever disperse the darkness of pain and suffering, injustice and depravity. Upon such a stage there seems little need for podiums behind which great orators must constantly preach the Divinely inspired virtues of righteous living, or the unthinkable retribution that awaits those asleep in their seats. After having witnessed the Biblical parting of the Red Sea, what form of mental illness might have turned the beneficiaries of such spectacle, once more, against the miracle worker Himself?
Comparatively, it is the unRuled universe, its bestial forces unchecked, where creation and destruction are, as metaphor, the whimsical rolls of dice thrown against the icy walls of a cosmological insane asylum. It is here, amid the madness, that the sentient mind finds true moral purpose, direction and responsibility. An old saying states how, in the land of the blind, the man with one eye is king. Likewise in the midst of an unsupervised sanitarium, the rational person is the caretaker of all other inmates. Or their enslaver. Furthermore the inmates of the mind, the many within the one.
The accusation is routinely made that, given a choice, the Godless person readily shirks and sheds their mantle of propriety in favor of libertine, hedonistic impositions and assaults upon their fellow men and women. That only the pleasure of pleasing one’s Creator, with threats of punishment or denial of rewards if one does not, can tame the human animal. Except that humans are not animals, it is said. They simply, at times, behave like them.
Such complaints, however, are transparent at their roots for they place all trust, all belief, all hope in the ideal perfection of Heavenly love and honor. Should such bonds be sorely tested, broken for many, shattered and torn asunder for others, no alternative is offered or available to cushion the blows, the heartache, the disappointment, the loss of faith. Rather, the fallen angel of one’s spirit is again plunged into the forsaken depths from which it had originally ascended. So delivered, the demon is truly of the accursed, considers itself to be so, and acts accordingly. A newly spawned enemy of virtue is the result, whose born-again God is now a lawless abandon only slightly curbed by corrupt and incompetent, albeit well meaning systems of authority.
It seems far better and easier to add God to one’s repertoire of rationales for civility, than to derive them solely from ethereal, supernatural, and oft-fleeting philosophical, highly changeable origins.
A poetic satisfaction exists in the perception of beauty for its own sake, neither dependent on, nor related to anyone or anything else -- without intimidation or cajoling, set against a world of ugliness. Because it is so easy to see the grotesque, indulge in it, succumb to it, the willful embrace of loveliness, of kindliness, is the very act and definition of righteousness.
That a desire exists for reward and punishment is hardly in doubt; the human psyche thrives on both. The virtuous citizen wants -- even demands -- a well delineated purpose for living a moral life, plus a just end for those who choose goodness and kindness and decency. And especially an equal reckoning for those who opt to live a less dignified lifestyle via the misery of others.
Ethical choices as embraced by the individual, are mostly inspired by a respect for, and a belief in, an ultimate code of moral conduct. Actions that honor the wisdom and guidelines set forth by those who worship and speak for the Highest of powers. It is interesting that two very important human concerns, namely need and want, regardless of merit, represent two major expressions for which the natural world seems to have little if any regard. They are conditions upon which no particular significance is placed, and perhaps least relevant of nature’s great schemes. Yet, in human terms, needs and wants represent a complex pairing that remains among the most critical of social and cultural debates.
So true is this axiom about human appetites that if one’s desire for justice, their need for its implementation, is threatened or spurned, then that person’s life plus the lives of all others, may cease to have importance or value. Absent justice in one form or another, all of nature -- the entire universe -- is henceforth perceived as a giant cosmological farce, the practical joke to end all, a horrific comedy that plays dark and meaningless, devoid of sanity and worth.
Without Divine reason and judgment to give the world its ethical and moral laws, to provide a coherent, consistent framework for human behavior, people are permissibly free, it is argued, to pursue whatever amoral actions are both expedient and gratifying. To the utter exclusion and expense of every other consideration based solely on notions of courtesy and decency. Except those, of course, that may interfere with personal freedom itself. Or endanger one’s personal safety.
Contrary to the popular belief (in some circles) that religion and ritual are basically for the dim-witted, doctrines of faith appeal to many of the brightest, most secure and successful, well grounded individuals in society. Once adopted, inculcated within one’s very soul, such beliefs resolve and put-to-rest some of humankind’s most vexing and perplexing, philosophical enigmas. However, if a person is sensitive enough, cares enough, loves more than is good for them to do so, knows more than what is safe for them to understand, these same questions if left unanswered, often lead to disastrous personal consequences. A wanderlust without direction or circumstance, minus purpose and destination.
So crucial is an attachment to ritualized religious beliefs which reinforce one’s personal and private sense of cosmological structure and order, of basic right and wrong, that the adherent cannot imagine, cannot fathom willingly or otherwise, the argumentative position of others who profess opposing ideas. Usually kind and compassionate, a true believer is easily angered, frequently indignant, often intolerant of opposition. And for no minor reasons. Aggressive opponents of religion like to suggest how other, equally potent principles exist beyond -- instead of -- Divine guidance. They contend that their heretical doctrines provide reason enough for proper human conduct. That ethics and good character need not be based on religious dogma. That scruples virtually identical to those held aloft by the religious devotee are often and equally embraced by nonbelievers, but for entirely different reasons. That secular ideologies can demonstrate how people, on their own, come to learn and understand via routine life experiences, the basic differences between right and wrong. That religion should only enhance, but never supply the sole motivation or rational source of such life-enhancing epiphanies. Religious orthodoxy, though positive in many ways, only reinforces our innate tendencies to choose decent behavior over rationalized indecent acts. Reliance upon religion for revelations of truth are inherently dangerous, yet only slightly more than one's equal dependence on secular science and philosophy.
Admittedly one big difference lies in the fact that religious principles shepherd whole flocks, while the irreligious persuade and influence only individuals or small groups, and rarely more. Another weakness of atheism is its reliance on what are called situational ethics. Flexible, spontaneous rules by which the individual, him or herself, based upon personal experience or conjecture, assesses right or wrong according to impulsive, highly subjective criteria, including diverse, jumbled philosophic definitions, and some level of likely inadequate information or reasoning.
Whereas many judge religion by the worst of its advocates, the qualities of atheism are often defined, by comparison, via cited examples of its best proponents. Self-righteous atheists and agnostics like to tout the great philosophers, writers, scientists and others who have shirked religion. While in the same breath, they conveniently ignore historic, frequently satanic, sadistic evildoers of similar ilk; disbelievers love to cite a particular Catholic Pope who killed some birds because their singing disturbed his peace and quiet. It is a fair and reasonable assumption that most atheists fall well below the very marks they use to criticize the faith-based actions of others. That an atheist ever develops any compassion, good will and character, seems remarkable and gives rise to questions of why and how such a person ever chooses decency over vileness. By comparison, the success and benefits of religion are generally far superior. But for reasons both obvious and subtle. More important, perhaps, is why and how the secular individualist finds cause to live a life of virtue equal to many if not most of his or her religion-centered brethren. Neither more ethical, nor less. Neither more moral, nor less.
The human condition is notable for its shared attributes, as well as a proliferation of unique characteristics among individuals. Most persons suffer, with equal effect, from common neurotic foibles, insecurities, impulsive poor judgment and other similar problems. They embrace sympathetic or compassionate affinities for humor, affairs of the heart and of the soul. Per the latter, the majority of people, again with good reason, long for an existence free of pain and distress, both physical and emotional. If not in this life, then after. There is a yearning for final judgment where the bad are punished and the good rewarded.
Persons from all walks of life, from every corner of the globe, relate to the varied and numerous aspects of life which give us enjoyment and heartache, elation and depression. And in such respects society is rarely divided by splits among Christians and Jews, atheists and others. As concerns the basic struggles of everyday living, survival is everyone’s religion. All attend the same church and most contribute something to the commensal, communal plate.
Many, however, steal from the donated offerings. In a metaphorical sense, they would, for personal gain, murder their fellow parishioners, even burn down the church itself. It is from these individuals, aberrational and sociopathic, especially when empowered by wealth or position, that whole civilizations turn divisive, self-destructive, fearful, accusative and judgmental. But understandably so, given the incompetent bureaucratic systems that govern human affairs.
Imperfect laws and inadequate justice give way, and sway, to idealized concepts of perfect laws and perfect justice. Concern prevails that lawless behavior breeds more of the same. That amoral acts promote more harmful forms of immoralities, which in turn seduce others to falter. Belief endures that such libertine freedoms weaken the social fabric and that family, children, and lawful order is diminished accordingly. Let alone jeopardizing the personal safety and security of innocent, law-abiding citizens.
Civilizations operate on justice systems whose laws are largely designed to deter (punish) the worst of its citizenry. Rather than, in a more perfect world, a judicial structure where principles of reward recruit a culture’s most gifted, talented, and thoughtful members. Much of society’s resources, energy, manpower and money are siphoned away by chasing and arresting, adjudicating and jailing, anti-social misfits and the pathologically insane. Especially as regards the alcohol, tobacco, firearm and drug wars. And particularly the price paid by (impact on) innocent victims. The same law-abiding civilians for whom security continues as a crucial, critical concern.
The Anarchy Of Order.
Intelligent, sincere people realize the inherent futility of bureaucratized justice, the ages-old interplay of crime and punishment. With much consternation such persons accept the flaws, miscarriages, unfairness, prejudicial, racist, and other shortcomings of most courts. They understand that compared to mob rule, star chambers, or vigilantism, imperfect laws are the best method humans have yet designed for dealing with a cruel world populated by cold, crafty, often sadistic criminals. Rather than allow private citizens to dispense justice on their own, a situation fraught with innumerable problems, society takes upon itself, in the name of all its citizens, to seek satisfaction on behalf of the wronged. Additionally the lives and safety of an uninvolved citizenry are also protected. Or so goes the intent.
True satisfaction and solace can only be derived via Absolute Justice. Something found solely, it is reasoned and believed, in another world at another time, where verdicts are rendered, rewards and punishments administered by an infallible Judge. Opponents, nonbelievers, or those indifferent and apathetic despite the Rulings to come, are thought to face harsh punishments in some ways equal to that suffered by enthusiastic transgressors.
Thus at least one version of peace placates the moral mobs who cry out for holy blood, preferably spilled from unholy lawbreakers. To great extent, the righteous atheist too, cries out for vengeance against the evil and wicked among us. The Secular Sheriff does not, however, wish to take any chances. No desire exists to allow for extenuating circumstances that a compassionate God might weigh in favor of a lighter, more lenient sentence. No last minute repenting and forgiveness for the offending, offensive perpetrator.
The ultimate irony is that in the short term, the atheist seems more interested in justice than his or her religious counterpart. The infidel would strive for a more politically libertarian system that would establish a Heavenly tribunal (so desired by the faithful) here on Earth today. Not in a thousand years hence. Or never. God is free to do with a villain’s soul as He or She sees fit, but leave the living body to us nonbelievers.
A righteous atheist is an oxymoron, many might contend. They would say how it is not possible to worship goodness in the absence of God. Goodness, it is argued, springs from God and is inseparable from Him. Others would strongly disagree. Atheists mostly, I imagine.
No such thing as goodness exists, or evil, for that matter. Not as things. Both are abstract labels attached to behaviors and events that either promote life or harm it. The great humanitarian, Albert Schweitzer, defined good as that which supports life, and evil as harming it. One cannot hold goodness in the palm of a hand. But one can hold and comfort a child cradled in one’s arms. Evil is not a symbol or a flag, but both can be brandished by thugs who seek to murder both bodies and spirits. Religious, philosophical convictions and aspirations are inborn within human consciousness. One need not necessarily be taught the value of virtue, beyond the disciplines required to curb childhood impudence. In this sense, goodness and evil are such potent, omnipresent forces in human life, they seem real, alive, and vital to our very existence. It seems entirely rational to me, the concept of worshiping Good, as if it were a living, breathing power unto itself. Unfortunately the opposite is also true as many attend haughty altars of wickedness.
To a large degree, morals are learned naturally, through trial and error, via experience, positive and negative feedback, and constant reinforcement. We learn limits and self-restraint from attitudes vested purely in self-interest and self-preservation. We learn compassion because we discover that others share our same feelings of joy and sorrow and satisfaction born of camaraderies. Bonds of friendship born of gratitude and recompense.
This is not to suggest that scruples come of their own accord without nurturing and encouragement. Though a blank slate at birth, not unlike a new, unwritten computer hard drive, all the initial programming required for kindness or cruelty already exists. It is only the emphasis placed on specific attributes, then accessed accordingly, that determines priorities of either a constructive or destructive nature. Societies simply mold or prioritize what are innately human qualities. For better or worse. History demonstrates that individuals, on their own and for whatever reasons, frequently realize the importance of fostering our better selves. By virtue of epiphanies and the like, we come to appreciate how it is in the best interest of everyone to do so, but especially as relates to ourselves. Maturity is measured against the joy we feel by another’s happiness. Failure to learn this most important, fundamental lesson, imperils one’s very soul, be that as it may.
Many condemn the endorphin-charged mania of seemingly hypnotized religious devotees and zealots. Then these same judgmentalists simultaneously applaud and encourage the identical euphoric adulation when manifested as patriotism, nationalism, or particularly sports-ism. We condemn the preacher who empties the pockets of the sick and indigent, while we stuff the wallets of sports announcers and bank accounts of players who prey upon ritualized, frenzied bloodlust.
Without forthcoming major modifications, religion (in general) is on a fast track to obsolescence. Though science and technology make poor substitutes for the empathy found in traditional religious faith and worship, they do propel humankind to increasingly higher planes of intellectual sophistication. Soon, when life becomes an easily created and manipulated commodity -- one of the last strongholds of the faithful who believe life is the sole domain of a singularly empowered Creator -- religion will face its greatest challenge.
It is likely that in the distant future, God will be worshiped as a natural force rather than an intelligence. Not nature itself necessarily, but something more all encompassing. Probably some unifying principle yet to be discovered or invented. Perhaps the ultimate unification of the micro world of Quantum Mechanics with the macro universe of Einstein. The current concept of a mindful God allows for prayer and the inherent potential for two-way communication. Orthodox belief, if stretched, further begs an uncomfortable metaphor wherein the grown child, in the form of advanced human civilization, confronts the now elderly babysitter, God, whose activities at the time He babysat were those of indifference, ambivalence, silence, and an utter lack of conscientious caretaking. In the Earthly nursery, a wall poster listed a multitude of rituals and commandments that defined good and bad behavior. But neither bandage nor compassion, in a very real sense, was ever applied to the countless childhood injuries of both flesh and spirit.
The creed of an atheist demands that, were God to exist, He would need to face His accusers and answer for His unconscionable apathy. Instead of war crimes, indictments of criminal negligence might be brought, with accusations of a failure to protect, to nurture and serve, plus an inability or unwillingness to render aid and alleviate suffering. Additionally, a failure to devise and implement systems for sustaining life that were less severe and far less cruel.
The solitary method of learning from hardships, though expedient and efficient, also includes torture and torment of the innocent, abuse and punishment of animals and children. Were some form of consciousness at work, the Design, a perverse process at best, is arguably sadistic in nature. A further indication of God’s abysmal incompetence as overseer and caretaker of a depraved, indecent world of His own making. God is seen as a renegade, outlaw, hypocrite, in complete violation of the very principles demanded of His own worshipers. The wronged now demand a necessary trial of God where humankind, past and present, sits as judge and jury. Proposed is the likely prospect that humans themselves will someday become peer divinities, and will hopefully exercise their powers with more gentility, kindness, grace and intelligence.
Witness the nouveau, Neo-God-Collective that celebrates its amoral adulation for the beauty of some principle that unifies the four forces of nature: Gravity, Electricity, the Strong and Weak Nuclear forces. The newly empowered Ape who chooses compassion over expedience.
So outrageous, sacrilegious, and unacceptable is the foregoing scenario as described, that the only reasonable, rational answer possible describes an autonomous, Godless universe. Ultimately, the atheist accuses no One, and either awaits the glorious human achievements yet to develop, or anticipates the worst from an unworthy, incorrigible species.
Choosing Choices.
A person’s decision to believe in a peaceable, functional, and productive doctrine that is likely false, could be sharply contrasted to (compared with) their refusal to accept a more sober, even mentally destructive revelation that was likely based on truth. That would replace one understanding of reality with another, the only difference being the authenticity of the one, and fraudulence of the other. An irony exists whereby the former condition, where one clings to what is demonstrably untrue, is preferable, even desirable in most cases. This is because facts alone do not bring order and direction to both the individual and society. Knowledge, in and of itself, does little more than promote and sanction amoral behaviors whose ethics may vary widely according to circumstance or whim.
It is difficult to distinguish one who is at genuine intellectual odds with a belief in God, from an individual whose own unresolved psychological disorders manifest themselves by a denial of God. A belief that the universe is Godless, that God is dead, that nature is mindless, without reason or purpose, inevitably results in some form of irreconcilable, though often subtle, mental disturbance.
A universe without a Creator is so traumatic a concept for most people, that the mind grows numb from prolonged contemplation. The stakes are such that under other conditions, similar explanations and rationalizations about the origin of something, of anything comparable, would be readily dismissed. But in the case of religion, instead of predictable and expected skepticism, unprovable absurdities are enthusiastically embraced.
Just as anger is the result of electrochemical responses in brains, and propensity for rage varies among individuals, the exclusively human gullibility as regards religious histrionics may result from cerebral structures and chemicals that also vary from person to person. Some biophysical model exists that is similar for most, but apparently differs for some. Too much of one enzyme, too little of another, might be all that separates the priest from the hedonist. A principle that is not hard and fast, but plays into the array of other forces at work within a person’s psychological makeup.
Arguments & Questions Opposing / Supporting The Existence Of A Supreme Creator.
It is often said by kindhearted, well meaning people, that evolution does not necessarily deny the existence of God. That both beliefs can and do exist in harmony with one another. Indeed that Darwinism is easily one of the means by which God has governed and continues to monitor the cosmos. Unfortunately such a "feel good" proposition is completely fallacious. Here's why: even a rudimentary understanding of the process of natural selection leads to a realization that it represents a sequence of events entirely independent of God. The whole idea behind evolution is that it functions very well on its own -- in the absence of an intelligent and unnecessary Creator. And in so doing, eliminates the requirement for intervention. The question is also begged as to why a God would even exist at all, and what purpose is served by that existence. Other than that of an interfering dabbler.
Because science remains unable to answer the most critical of all questions, namely where and how matter originated within a vacuous void, it is assumed that only an omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent almighty Creator could have accomplished the deed. Could have pulled all manner of stellar rabbits from a Big Bang hat.
Given the Big having already Banged, science is capable of taking things from there and arriving here, where we are today. Not a smooth, step-by-step process, but a stumbling gait on a pothole-riddled road that, none the less, weaves inexorably home. Working backward, no reason appears to thwart the idea that some natural process or event, as yet undiscovered, is responsible for the genesis of all matter. No reason, that is, except for the notion of God. In which case process, as an idea, is forfeit altogether.
But why the Bang? Why then, and from what nothingness was the Big culled and collected, gravitationally compressed, then ignited? The questions themselves seem too simple, seem somehow off-the-mark, to miss whatever core premise or machinations lie at the heart of the matter. Literally and figuratively. That the universe possesses a lifespan, measured in years, seems absurd because one wonders what came before, then after.
One answer, of course, is God. But what again, exactly, was the question? That He has always been? And just recently (judging by the age of the universe in general, the Earth in particular) got around to fussing with human destinies? These answers, like the questions, seem too simple, again missing the gist of whatever happened, is happening, is truly going on, went on, and will continue to go on.
It is not so much that the genuine atheist disbelieves in or denies the existence of God, but that the whole business, including the clumsy guesswork of scientific speculation, leaves one in a philosophic quagmire of partial insight and complete frustration. No nuts and bolts pragmatist worth their skeptical wrench can, for even a moment, honestly believe that some form of gender specific, all powerful Entity gives a rat’s behind about the billions of lunatics running around on some dust speck drifting about the desolate outback of some ordinary galaxy. One that is little different from millions and billions of others exactly like it. And let alone in a million-billion other dimensions as well.
By the same token, human life is a rather marvelous, remarkable and spectacular event amid all of nature’s otherwise grungy hubbub. Some accounting needs to be made of it and should be made of it. A tidy orderliness permeates all the chaos, all the sound and all the fury. The singular hope for human salvation, for saving it from itself, from its own eagerness to destroy as well as create, may exist solely in the form of moral guideposts. Fortunately for the more pacifistic atheists, followers of religious imperatives are sufficient in number to subdue and restrain the regressive setbacks perpetrated by a powerful minority of sociopaths and malcontents.
It is very much an us against them. In this respect, decent, law-abiding atheists, agnostics, and devout believers are unified, much as Jews and Christians, against the real threats posed by those who possess a philosophic belief in nothing at all. Let alone concern for the welfare of strangers. Such enemies of virtue and honor include individuals and groups, even whole governments, for whom no principles direct a common respect for anything. Unfortunately, rigid doctrines that lay claim to exclusive truths, and to pure, sanctimonious sources from which human decency is spawned, tend to alienate the positive, sympathetic counter-forces that seek truth in the absence of faith.
Of Interest Only To Ourselves.
Based upon all the foregoing considerations, it is thoughtfully asserted that a Godless universe, by its very anarchical nature as it affects human destinies, cries out all the more for justice, demands reason in the face of the unreasonable and unfathomable, seeking joy and humility amid the cold dispassion of meaningless existence.
By contrast, given a cosmos governed by Rational Omnipotence, where all scores are eventually settled, all debts paid in full, hatreds laid to rest, and rewards bestowed for obedience and contrition, a certain serenity is available to all who subscribe. A peace-of-mind that, like an unending sunrise, shall forever disperse the darkness of pain and suffering, injustice and depravity. Upon such a stage there seems little need for podiums behind which great orators must constantly preach the Divinely inspired virtues of righteous living, or the unthinkable retribution that awaits those asleep in their seats. After having witnessed the Biblical parting of the Red Sea, what form of mental illness might have turned the beneficiaries of such spectacle, once more, against the miracle worker Himself?
Comparatively, it is the unRuled universe, its bestial forces unchecked, where creation and destruction are, as metaphor, the whimsical rolls of dice thrown against the icy walls of a cosmological insane asylum. It is here, amid the madness, that the sentient mind finds true moral purpose, direction and responsibility. An old saying states how, in the land of the blind, the man with one eye is king. Likewise in the midst of an unsupervised sanitarium, the rational person is the caretaker of all other inmates. Or their enslaver. Furthermore the inmates of the mind, the many within the one.
The accusation is routinely made that, given a choice, the Godless person readily shirks and sheds their mantle of propriety in favor of libertine, hedonistic impositions and assaults upon their fellow men and women. That only the pleasure of pleasing one’s Creator, with threats of punishment or denial of rewards if one does not, can tame the human animal. Except that humans are not animals, it is said. They simply, at times, behave like them.
Such complaints, however, are transparent at their roots for they place all trust, all belief, all hope in the ideal perfection of Heavenly love and honor. Should such bonds be sorely tested, broken for many, shattered and torn asunder for others, no alternative is offered or available to cushion the blows, the heartache, the disappointment, the loss of faith. Rather, the fallen angel of one’s spirit is again plunged into the forsaken depths from which it had originally ascended. So delivered, the demon is truly of the accursed, considers itself to be so, and acts accordingly. A newly spawned enemy of virtue is the result, whose born-again God is now a lawless abandon only slightly curbed by corrupt and incompetent, albeit well meaning systems of authority.
It seems far better and easier to add God to one’s repertoire of rationales for civility, than to derive them solely from ethereal, supernatural, and oft-fleeting philosophical, highly changeable origins.
A poetic satisfaction exists in the perception of beauty for its own sake, neither dependent on, nor related to anyone or anything else -- without intimidation or cajoling, set against a world of ugliness. Because it is so easy to see the grotesque, indulge in it, succumb to it, the willful embrace of loveliness, of kindliness, is the very act and definition of righteousness.
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