Intellectuals tend to think of themselves are rational beings. That their worldview is based on logical assessment of observations, experiences, and information with any irregularities discarded. The paradox here is that most learned information has one very large fundamental flaw: It's based on trust. For example when I read an article on a site like Science Daily I trust that the information is accurate. They're a science news site, and the articles are referenced to published research in peer reviewed journals. Unless I want more depth, I don't usually try to find the original article (and even if I do, often I can only find an abstract and not the full text). And that chain of trust doesn't stop there: The bulk of the knowledge stored in my brain has been learned from sources I trust (whether rightly or wrongly). This includes parents, teachers, friends, books, visual media and news sources. I do my best to ask questions, cross reference and verify information, but there's just too much information coming at me to fully dissect every single nugget for objective validity. And this is true for all of us, everywhere.
Here's an example of how easy it is to "know" something with confidence and still be wrong:
A few years ago, when I was still working as a chef, I was chatting with one of the servers over drinks after work. We were talking about cheese. After a couple more drinks I was getting very excited about the topic, and carried on about the wonders of Canadian cheese. Even cheddar was a uniquely Canadian cheese, I said (now hold your comments for a moment!).
A couple of months passed, and the server went to England on vacation and returned quite upset with me. She had been talking excitedly about cheese to a friend there and got to the part about Canadian cheddar being a unique part of our food heritage. And as you have probably guessed by now, her friend frowned at here and said: "Ummm... Haven't you heard of Cheddar?"
"Yes," she said, "that's what I'm talking about."
"No... I mean Cheddar. The city. In England."
She turned bright orange (Canadian cheddar is distinguished by the orange dye used to identify it as NOT being from Cheddar, England. I can't verify this, but I seem to remember learning somewhere that it was a practice started in WWII. If there's any truth to it, I'd imagine it was part of an effort to make sure that supplies for British and Canadian troops made it to the right places.) and cursed my name.
She trusted me as a source of accurate information because I tend to be a bit of a know-it-all and I like to talk about pretty much anything. And a lot of the time I'm reasonably accurate (though accuracy is inversely proportional to the number of pints I've had). Unfortunately when I'm wrong, I'm really really wrong. This incident reminded me to take everything I hear with a pinch of salt, especially that little voice of memory in my own mind.
An example from pop culture is the myth that we only use ten percent of our brains. This is usually attributed to being a quote from Einstein and because he's probably the best known scientific genius of the previous century, we tend towards trusting things he's said. Of course it doesn't hold up to logic very well (what would the evolutionary benefit of unused brain matter be?) and since more recent neurological research has shown that we use all of our brain most of the time, it's now popular to scoff at the phrase and say that Einstein didn't know everything. Which is true. Though I think we forget that Einstein was just a person, and he wasn't a neurologist, so he may have been referring not to brain function, but to the tendency of people to be mentally lazy and not challenge the things they think they know to any great degree (context matters!). It's important to always remember that every single one of us is ruled by a complex network of beliefs based on our trust of the information stored in our brains and that at any given moment, an unknowable percentage of that information is either inaccurate or simply wrong.
So why believe anything? Shouldn't we live in a state of existential openness and simply acknowledge the unknowability of everything?
In a word: No.
How on earth would we get anything done if we had to question every single piece of information handed to us?
I have to conclude that beliefs are a necessary part of our mental function. They keep us from being bogged down in intellectual quicksand and let us focus on the tasks directly in front of us.
We are very very very small beings in a very very very large universe. So to make sense of it, we need to have beliefs or we don't function very well. Even Einstein had beliefs: "My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind."
And at last I come around to god.
In the above quote, Einstein is demonstrating a belief in "first cause", the idea that the universe didn't spontaneously generate itself from nothing, but had some creative force behind it. Some might describe this force as the architect, the clockmaker, the engineer, the artist, the composer, or all of these things. It's important to recognise that these terms are being used as metaphors. Scientists are often believers in "first cause", but I don't think I've ever met a scientist who believes in a literal clockmaker. It's difficult (certainly for me!) to study advanced sciences without appreciating the elegance and paradoxical simplicity of such things as gravity, electrons, DNA or neurobiology. Their study can give me the same quivering epiphany that can accompany exposure to great works of art. And as with art, it's sometimes easy for me to think that they couldn't have happened by accident, but are works of genius. I've only started to change from that line of thinking because of the lengthy mental imaginings that have eventually led to this series of blog posts.
So what do I believe?
Even more than the topic of prayer, I hesitate to enter into this realm. Some of you reading this (and as things stand at the moment, most of the people on the planet) will strongly disagree with what I'm about to write. I do apologize for any discomfort I might cause, and I'm very serious in the belief that my own beliefs are just that, and in no way do I think that you do not have the right to believe in whatever you choose. If you have orthodox religious beliefs, you may wish to stop here and skip to the next post in this series (If you choose to continue, feel free to post to the comments section. I will do my best to only remove obscene comments and death threats.).
I find it difficult to believe in "god" as an anthropomorphic superhuman. I just don't see any evidence that there is an Anglo-Saxon male with a long flowing white beard who can fly, teleport, create matter and energy from will, become invisible, and communicate telepathically with favorites among his creations. I find it very difficult to believe that a force capable of creating and managing the vastness of "his" creation would even pay attention to any individual, group of individuals, or even this planet. It would be a bit like DaVinci having a favorite brush stroke on the Mona Lisa, or like Steve Jobs having a favorite bit. Certainly I think I can say with confidence that there is currently no evidence of such a being in the observable universe. Satellites give us a view of the whole planet via Google Earth and there is no cluster of clouds matching any interpretation of biblical heaven. We have telescopes that look ever farther out into the universe, and because of the nature of light, we are looking not only across vast distances but also to earlier times in the universe's existence. The farther out we are able to resolve images, the earlier these image have occurred. If we are ever able to resolve the "edge" of the universe, we will be looking at the big bang itself. Astronomers see some pretty amazing things, but so far nothing that might represent a supernatural god. And even if we were able to find a place the fits descriptions of "heaven", wouldn't that mean that it's simply an alien world with no mystical properties at all?
As far as I know, that anthropomorphic view exists primarily as a result of the interpretation of religious writings. As a baby, I was baptised Anglican, and as a youth did go through a brief period of reading the new testament and finding some comfort from it. When I was around twelve years old or so, I started to notice some of the contradictions and inconsistencies that are a part of the text. I just can't bring myself to see how god would write (or cause someone to write) a volume with such blatant errors (The best one is right at the beginning of the new testament: The genealogy of Joseph. It's there to verify that Jesus was of the line of David on both sides, and therefore the fulfilment of Jewish prophesy. However it's a flagrant violation of one of the basic tenants of Christianity; the immaculate conception. If Jesus didn't have a biological father, then his human heritage is only through his mother. I remember asking this question and being told variations on a theme: That since god created man in "his" image, and as David and his descendants were descendants of god then Jesus was of the line of David through god and Mary. But I've always been a bit stubborn and continued to ask why Joseph was included at all. "God works in mysterious ways" or "That's why you have to have faith" were the inevitable answers and they were never good enough for me.) Sometime around then, I decided that the bible was just a book of mythology, and while I've since learned that myth has it's own spiritual value, I've never been able to see it as any kind of firm "truth".
Since then, I've always though that god (if such a being exists at all) is not likely to be a biological phenomenon (Note I don't think of god as having a sex. Male and female are biological phenomena. God, not being a biological phenomenon, is unlikely to have a sex.). As a result, I have to think that god is neither intelligent nor sentient as these are both biological traits produced by neurological processes within a nervous system. There's just no mechanism for them to occur without a brain. However, that doesn't mean god can't have creativity or consciousness.
In this context, I'm defining creativity as the ability to create (I'll deal with consciousness later). And it's a fundamental property of the universe as we know it. Energy creates matter, and matter creates energy in a never ending cycle of creation and destruction. Celestial objects are created on an ongoing basis as the universe expands without any need for intelligence or sentience to direct them. As far as I'm able to understand it, creation happens as a consequence of the physical parameters that allowed the big bang to occur. As I'm defining it, creativity doesn't necessarily require intelligence or life and certainly isn't restricted to humans.
Consciousness is harder to define as a universal process.
To start with, I'm not talking about consciousness as a psychologist might define it. In that context, "awareness of self" is a primary property and can include such phenomena as the ability to recognise oneself in a mirror, or the ability to contemplate abstract ideas (like the existence of god!). Spiritual consciousness takes awareness out of the confines of the brain and refers to the interconnectedness between one individual the world around him (or her). I'd like to take that another step farther and suggest that consciousness could be one of the binding forces of the universe.
This isn't a new idea. I didn't think of it. Taoists have been trying to define a conscious universe (or rather its undefinability) for millennia. I'm tempted to start quoting Lao Tzu, but it doesn't really help me develop the extended definition I'm heading towards. For that, I have to go to quantum theory and an interpretation of it referred to as relational quantum mechanics (RQL) (This also isn't my idea. I got it from The Tao of Physics, and The Quantum and the Lotus. Good books, and much more articulate than I can manage.).
I realize I'm oversimplifying a very complex topic, but in a nutshell, RQL suggests that all quantum events occur not relative to the universe, but to the observer of the event. Most of what we observe in the macroscopic world is universally relative. Our planet revolves on an axis that has a direct relationship to it's orbit around the sun. No matter what angle we look at it, we will always see the same orientation and direction. Quantum particles are thought to break free of this fixed relationship. Electrons, for example, appear to exist more as regions of probability than as the points in space we usually imagine them being. Lets narrow it down to a small part of a very large topic, and talk about electrons and a quantum property called spin.
Like most quantum events, electron spin isn't quite as easily defined as the earth spinning on its axis, since quantum events don't seem to occur only within the four dimensional spacetime that we habitually call "reality" (as you'll see in a video posted below, the current number of dimensions that physicists consider useful is eleven), they are particularly difficult to visualise. It will serve our purposes if we imagine them as if they did, like a spinning top or a gyroscope. Now when an observer views and measures electron spin it is viewed in direct relationship to them. But a second observer acting simultaneously would observe exactly the same thing. So the electron appears to react to each observer independently. This is often used to suggest that quantum events react to the consciousness of the observer (I remember once talking about this stuff with a friend. He eventually became quite upset because he felt I was using physics to "prove" irrational nonsense. So in case you find yourself going there, I have to point out that I'm not trying to prove anything. I'm trying to define my beliefs and describe them. I can't prove any of this.). If we use the psychological definition of consciousness, then I can't help but find this extraordinarily conceited.
If we are truly influencing quantum events, then wouldn't that mean that they don't happen (or at least not the same way) when we aren't looking? It's the old koan: If a tree falls in a forest, does it make any sound? It's a question used to make us think on how we perceive the world, but it's silly to think that no sound happens just because we aren't there. (Now, if we define sound as a neurological event interpreting waves of molecular vibration in the air, then we could say it requires our presence, and that's another story!) Clearly the universe goes on without us. We can't even see distant events until they've already happened, so our conscious observation was not required. A more realistic interpretation is that each component of the universe is acting as an observer (Note that we have to redefine "observer". If we're going use the term in this way, we are acknowledging that this use of the term does not in any way resemble our biological ability to see.). Now if (and this is a BIG if...) the universe is observing itself, perhaps we can redefine consciousness as the phenomenon of quantum events behaving like observers.
If so, could god exist outside of the universe as a initiating, creative force? An existential consciousness surrounding its creation, neither sentient nor intelligent, but transcendent of both?
I thought so for many years. The atheist argument against this belief is simply that the universe is by definition everything that exists and therefore nothing could exist outside of it. My counter-argument is to suggest that we define the universe as everything WE are capable of seeing and that it is entirely subjective to our own perceptions.
Another concept in theoretical physics is referred to as quantum foam. The idea is that there's a quantum substrate "beneath" the fabric of the universe that bubbles and "foams" with bits of partially formed reality much like soap bubbles in a bath (This is an analogy. I am not in any way suggesting that god is sitting in a bath somewhere playing with bubbles.). Most "bubbles" collapse before expanding beyond a limit called the Planck length. In keeping with the the bubble bath analogy, imagine that while most bubbles pop, some do not. As the mass of bubbles collapses, a few bubbles are stable enough to expand past the Planck length and become universes (realities) proper. If there's any truth to this concept (It isn't "science" in a formal sense because it is untestable, and currently I don't think anyone even has a clear concept of the technology that would be needed to be able to do so.), then when we see the universe expanding, then we are seeing our "bubble" growing. Eventually, rather than contracting (The eventual contraction of the universe is the big crunch, and is another untestable hypothesis.), the universe might simply "pop" and it's components return to the quantum foam. My point here is that even physicists tend to think that our universe has an "outside" of some sort. So like it or not, there is a "place" for a creator god to exist.
Buddhists (if my understanding is correct) don't believe in a creator. Their belief is that the universe is an infinite place and the process of creation and destruction is so fundamental to the workings of the universe that no first cause is necessary. Stephen Hawking quite famously mirrored this belief in an interview discussing m-theory. I've posted the video below. It's quite long and the relevant quote is at the end (taken out of context his statement can be seen as quite inflammatory, so I think it's important to see the whole clip):
My thoughts over the past few months have led me to think that perhaps first cause might be an unnecessary line of thinking even when discussing god.
Now, keep in mind that I'm still on a chain of though that ends with a discussion of prayer.
If praying to god has any purpose other than wishful thinking, then an external creative consciousness would have to have a way of directly interacting with incredibly small bits of its creation (i.e. the person praying) and adjusting reality to accommodate a response. While I certainly acknowledge that it's not something I can disprove, I have to say that it seems very very unlikely that a force of such scope would have the capacity to "think down" to our level (if it thinks at all!). Think for a moment on how hard it is to communicate abstract concepts with a child. They lack the tools to understand, and we as adults often lack the tools to help them. There's a reason people undertake very specialised education to develop an appropriate skill set for this task. And I would also argue that a lot of our concepts of god come from that very problem. Let's take the question "why did my father die?". An intellectually developed person would likely answer it in context with the father's life, discussing his history, and the circumstances surrounding the death itself. But what if the questioner lacks the intellectual tools to grasp this fairly large chain of information? It's easier to just say "He's gone home to God.", thereby giving comfort until such time as the questioner can explore things in more objective detail. (I've often considered that this is perhaps how most religious dogma comes into being. Take kosher food law: I can imagine ancient rabbis noticing that people who engaged in certain food handling practices tended to get sick less than those who were less specific in how they treated their food. As the rabbi was likely the only member of the community with any formal education, rather than explaining the concept of sanitation to blank uncomprehending stares, he might have simply said "because God said so." Other rabbis make similar observations and add to the canon of food handling practices. After a millennia or two and many many repetitions of similar scenes, it's simply accepted that god gave them the laws governing food handling.)
More recently I've started to think that maybe I need to radically change my definition of god. Going back to Stephen Hawking's statement above; an external god isn't necessary. So what about an internal god, investing the structure of the universe itself? Now that I've abandoned the notion of an intelligent god, I no longer have to think of it as having any appearance of organic behaviour. That means that god doesn't need anywhere in particular to be (This may sound like an "ah ha!" moment if you're an orthodox religious thinker and still reading this, but remember, I could only reach this point by abandoning the idea that god might have any similarity to the very human behaviour attributed to god in religious works.). So if the functional parts of the universe require a form of conscious observer to manifest into reality, I can redefine god as the creative, conscious force intrinsic to the fabric of nature. There's no need to attribute properties to god beyond the mathematical definitions of accepted theoretical physics. This definition of god doesn't need to be explained by quantum phenomena; god IS the quantum phenomena.
Philosophically (and as pure conjecture), this has been leading me to wonder if perhaps we have individual consciousnesses at all. Perhaps we share one consciousness separated only by the biological mechanisms of our bodies? Now if I call our individual share of that consciousness a soul, then I have a new and more practical definition for that as well.
Just to further drive home the idea that I'm redefining spiritual terms with observable phenomena, let me write quickly about reincarnation: Usually this is described as a supernatural embodiment of all that we are, moving to a new body to live life over again. But consider the ways in which we know we send parts of ourselves out into future generations. There are three mechanisms that I can think of: Through the things we build, the ideas we share, and our genetic heritage passed on to our children. Why do we need any other mechanism at all? Those three observable phenomena are more than enough for us to reincarnate through future generations if we simply redefine the term to describe what we can know with some confidence rather than pure (and often irrational) belief.
I'm always a bit confused by the human need for miraculous causes. What do we need them for? What's wrong with the miracles we can see all around us?
Miracles can be whatever we want them to be (Here I go, messing with definitions again!). If you see a plant flowering, it can be a miracle not in the event itself, but in that moment of attention you give it. Allowing the world to stop and just be in the moment appreciating the existence of that flower IS the miracle. No supernatural forces are necessary.
Do I believe in god? As a universal consciousness observing itself? Yes. As an anthropomorphic superhuman with supernatural powers? No.
So why do I bother using the word "god" at all?
Because context matters.
When I was at Centennial College in the Massage Therapy Program, one of the first courses we took was on alternative and complementary therapies. As part of one group project on chiropractic medicine, I put up a transparency showing the divisions of nerve groupings that chiropractic doctors use as part of their understanding of the spinal nerves. I can't find the one I used, but I have found something similar:
I was lucky in that the two pictures I used then were very close in size and design (unlike those above), and by putting one one top of the other received a collective "Oh!!!" from the class as they saw how similar the two systems actually are. Since I can't directly superimpose the above images in any useful way, here's a picture doing something similar (As with a lot of my thoughts in this post, this isn't a unique perspective, as someone posted this on google, and while not perfect, it hopefully comes close to illustrating my point!):
Similarly, god is how I interface with my sense of wonder at the experience of being alive. So, science is for understanding, and god is for experiencing. Two metaphors for different purposes.
A final thought in this instalment: I find it interesting that both orthodox religious followers and atheists share the same belief in a supernatural definition of god. Odd that they agree on something, isn't it?
Next up: Do I believe in prayer (part 3): Prayer is not a wishing well!
