The religious person looks at the world through the lens of their own reasoning and all the evidence seems fit so seamlessly. Assuming that you buy into the ‘truth’ of this far-fetched story about ‘the brain constructing what is reality’ that is going around (seems like a contradiction between these terms here, eh?): how do you get out of this mess? Perhaps you look for evidence of good and evil in the world. Well, when the options are to see random chance or miracle survival against all odds, it doesn’t seem too far a stretch to see divine intervention. The drive for coherence in human beings leads to conservatism. The less revisionary beliefs are more likely to make the cut, the more conflicting impressions ready to be axed to salvage the whole. From what I can tell, this is the sole appeal of miracles: otherwise reasonable people would be happy to believe that miracles could exist in the world as long as it gives credence to their otherwise overtly sanguine beliefs. What other reason do you have to justify such a belief in a deity: that you’ll go to heaven for it? Such egoistic beliefs don’t carry any convincing weight; you have to believe that your god is working around you to avoid looking like such a selfish prick. So each observation of low probability will most likely lead to confirmation of miracles. How do you angle out of this anachronistic circle, assuming you’re one of the unfortunate to be sucked in before you have the ability to fend off such viruses? One would assume that you’d just keep talking non-stop and heading nowhere, like any viciously circular reasoning leads to.

But look at this constant self-critical barrage that comes from us Socratics. The never-ending questioning that we’ve trained ourselves to appreciate is second nature now. Each move, each step that we make is marked by indecision and scorn, scepticism and indignation, having the arrogance to not let anyone else be our own worst critics. Each decision will be perceived as providing further questions, further confirmations of your Socratic nature and possible self-loathing. Regardless of any trends in pop-neuroscience, this seems to be a pretty decent self-enclosed circle of reasoning. If questioning absolutes is your maxim, then you’re not inclined to notice a way out when you’re so adept at spotting other questions that you haven’t asked. Once you start, there’s not any way of getting out unless you radically alter your ideas about ‘reason vs faith’.

The optimistic atheists that sincerely buy into the ‘Darwin Awards’ (and I have not met many of them, but they do exist!) posit that we could see the effects of natural selection in our lifetimes as the implications of deeply held religious belief lead to further crazy deaths. But this circle of confirmation bias is everywhere and people do have a tendency to value conservatism. I’m not sure if there are any studies about this, but I’d be interested in reading over any attempts. However, extreme religious belief hasn’t been too phased in the past 50 years, while those closer to atheistic thinking such as moderately religious families have been more inclined to abandon their religiosity (see the census data of most developed nations – but if you are reading this and know otherwise, please let me know).

One of the main benefits that I see in the Socratic position is that it offers a clear way out of the circle – eventually, critical thought turns on itself and wonders what use critical thoughts is. The positives and negatives are both weighed up, but then rejected and scorned because of the circularity. The Delphic shrine, seat of knowledge and wisdom, is left entirely alone in the care of Dionysus sometimes. The sheer psychological balance of the Ancient Greeks was profound, even in a puritan like Socrates. The great bearded man would outdrink and outreason everyone at the table and still be able to return home to his poor family as the sun rose, just as his God Apollo gave his finest blessings.

Where does this leave a contemporary Socratic who is unsure about how best proceed? There are at least one too many *hard* decisions that need making at the moment. I’m far too inclined to the Dionysian option and it seems to be working well so far. But this is clearly not a reliable solution.

However, the dialogical methods that Socrates used that made him such a formidable rationalist relied upon his followers and friends sacrificing themselves and their beliefs to be analytically dissected when needed. There is a distinct interpersonal commitment to rationality. I’ve lost this active element of this discursive model. I’ve lost the desire to question and upset those beliefs which have the possibility of teaching me something. For one, methods of communication across space/time have vastly improved from oral -> text -> mass-produced text -> internet. However, I’ve also tried to move away from this Apolline trait – Apollo was not only the god of rationality but a ‘social retard’ by today’s standards, twice as likely to overturn these ‘conventional rules’ and appeal to the ‘laws’ of the cosmos at the expense of a marginalised and less educated segment of the populace (Apollo was known as a bit of a womanizer). So now, my inputs and outputs are passive, contrived pieces (like this one) that stand on their own as objects to battle other objects to shower whoever participates with new thoughts and insights. Temporalised text battling other text: much less authentic than human input and output.

Maybe it’s smarter but slower. I’m usually a slower thinker than most people I meet, but this is getting intense. And even if this is true that smart thinking takes longer, it feels fucking empty in the mean time. Pity I can’t be hoping for a miracle, because I could use a blowjob from a godly man right now.

Miracle of fucking miracles, the spam comments are better than the drive-by religious repetition that drips into some of these posts. They are both as pointless and irrelevant, but at least some of the spam comments and URLs are entertaining. I have decided to clean up my comments by allowing a small portion of the spam through; these comments have certainly improved my efficacy with their kind and encouraging words.

Let this be a testament to the progress made in AI by spambots everywhere - these machines have created messages more appropriate than the vague cliches tossed about by the fleshy morons who feel compelled to make religious comments on a blog that posts a couple of times a year.

And what aggrandizing, self-depreciating wit the author uses to cut them down to size!

Long live those days that saw me scratching together some sloppy and lightly intoxicated rambling as a warm up for the things I was actually trying to write. Nowadays I’m sober from the boredom of being such an encouraging and contributing member of society: so sober, decaffeinated and bored that I’ve crept here at night to try and recall what that was like.

That was less than a year ago. I’ve been a positive role model for too long already. Give me my peers back so I can cut a hole in our reasoning and crawl back into that unfortunate gaping womb to hibernate. I need to stop ignoring those trendy, pseudo-academic, barely empirical educational wankfests and jump on board with some of those common counterexamples that philosophy majors are often vaguely familiar with. I need to re-envelop myself in those words, ideas and argumentative essays that birthed me while others around were content with writing soap operas. So many of those people I used to know are now parents, creating new life while they are still so incomplete in what they could become: soon everyone from back home will have started this cycle all over again, much to the dismay of us less-than-serious educators who would be content to kill off the industry if it meant an improved world in which more parents saw worth in educating their kids. It’s as I predicted before puberty set in. I’m tired of being correct in my cynicism. It needs a cathartic release and these reflections aren’t quite enough.

Funnily enough, most teacher are also masochistic introverts. Perhaps this can be my home away from home for a while, a recluse from the outside world and a justification for not ‘growing up’. That academic world that is truly fit for my stupid egoism will still be around and unchanged in a couple of years time.

Yes, lame post title. It’s how I roll baby. But holidays mean mindless TV, mindless TV means being annoyed at stupid religious propaganda, and stupid religious propaganda means venting in blogs. Oh, and blogs mean puns. To me anyway.

The Futurama episode titled ‘Godfellas’ has bending unit Bender shot out into space accidentally, apparently leaving him alone for the rest of eternity. During his voyage he runs through an asteroid belt and a small asteroid gets lodged in his casing. The asteroid is home to little living thingies who happen to think that Bender is god, and well, he orders them around and tries to help and ends up making things worse before they eventually blow each other up. Fair enough.

After all of this happens, a mourning Bender manages to crash into the actual theistic god who has somehow taken material form (I’m sure the dualists will make up some unconvincing argument as to how this is possible) and learned binary along the way. Bender shares his experience as ‘being god’; how it was so damn demanding and how it was so difficult to manage their society. Those who had faith in Bender the god believed that he would smite the unbelievers after listening to their prayers, leading them to victory, while the unbelievers for some reason were immoral bastards trying to bomb the religious, apparently because they’d ‘lost hope’ and were jealous or something. God tells Bender that it’s a balancing act and for some reason thinks this gem is relevant:

“When you do things right, people won’t be sure that you’ve done anything at all.”

According to this supposed god, people shouldn’t be able to know for certain if he exists or not because they will assume that he will always come to their rescue and do the good for them. Subjects are supposed to gain their own moral awareness, shown in the fact that by the end of the episode Bender is unknowingly led to do the good by something that this supposed god has told him. This also seems to involve knowing which prayers to answer and which not; leaving this balance so faith can work is supposed to justify leaving some prayers unanswered.

Picking on this is too easy. Perhaps I should have found something different to write about. But it was there, so what the hell.

It’s pretty obvious for starters that there are people out there who claim that they “know” that god exists. A majority of the world, in fact, despite them all meaning different things when they say it. Most notably we have the dramatic rise in fundamentalism world-wide. The funny (or perhaps scary) thing is that this conviction does not lead to passivity one bit; it leads to passionate action. Instead of (logically) assuming that an all powerful being can sort out his own problems, people feel the need to do things for him. Hence we have Osamas, Bushes and Robertsons.

Secondly, there are people who firmly deny the existence of god (even if only probabilistically like myself in a weak atheism) that haven’t ‘lost hope’, so to speak, of living a meaningful life; these people seem to be the majority of the unbelieving population (from personal experiences, being involved in atheistic communities). Not only this, but finitude is arguably more desirable than infinite consciousness - and the episode even offers similar arguments!! Bender’s drifting through space for all eternity is seen as meaningless because he will eventually become infinitely bored as less things come to entertain him. Imagine existing for all eternity, doing all the things that you have always wanted to do. Assuming that one has conscious thought capable of change, one will eventually do everything there is to do, know everything there is to know, perfected every attribute of ones being to the extent that one is capable of. While one may dream of living forever as a child (when the religious dogma is seeded), growing old leads to different attitudes towards death. Finitude is not necessarily an evil.

So the justification for faith (reasonless belief) is misleading. Which leads us back to the question: why should one believe that all events are working towards the greater good when it is not very probable at all that they are?

While Futurama and the Simpsons may be commended for their light-hearted stabs at organised religion, their depiction of the universal acceptance of a god is downright disgusting and incorrect.

    In the compulsory Christmas episode of the medical comedy Scrubs, ardent Christian surgeon Turk (denomination unspecified, but probably Catholic) begins to question his faith after countless people die and turn up injured on Christmas Eve. “How can I believe in a God,” he asks, “who lets innocent people suffer?” When confronted with the problem, his girlfriend Carla is also unable to give an answer. To understand this statement a major point needs to be clarified. If there is a deity or a god worthy of worship it must be omniscient, omnipotent and omni-benevolent. That’s the traditional theistic definition of god (the rejection of this argument being atheism). If your ‘god’ has a different set of characteristics then the atheist / theist positions are irrelevant to you, and no, you are not a theist. Now that that’s out of the way, let’s extend on Turk’s worries and chuck it into standard form, eh?

P1. A god is by definition omnipotent, omniscient and perfectly good.

P2. A perfectly good being would do everything in its power to increase good and decrease evil (unless an evil necessary for the greater good or to avoid a greater evil)

P3. An omniscient being knows all evils.

P4. An omnipotent being can eliminate all evils.

P5. There is a gratuitous amount of evil in the world, i.e. unnecessary evils that do not add to the greater good.

C. It is unreasonable to believe in a god.

    The show sends Turk on a mission to save his faith; after all, it feels so good for him to have faith in his god. We can’t have one of the show’s lead characters being content without some type of religious belief, can we? How can Turk account for all the seemingly unnecessary pain and suffering that he just witnessed? What we need here is a miracle; not an overtly religious message, but enough coincidence and luck to suggest that ‘higher forces’ are at work. So without any rational reason for his behaviour, assumedly just urged on by divine forces, Turk runs down the road to find a girl giving birth and saves the life of a baby or something like that.

    What is meant by ‘miracle’? Perhaps a miracle is a logically impossible event that does occur. But Turk’s ‘miracle’ is not logically impossible; similar unlikely things happen by chance all the time. Perhaps they mean a miracle is something that is unexplainable. As a sceptical philosophy student, I experience things daily that are unexplainable; to me, anyway. But they aren’t miracles. We often just lack a decent explanation for phenomena. It would have been silly for early 16C biologists to just assume that babies were miracles because they where unable to account for how foetuses develop. Perhaps they mean that a miracle is just a low-probability event that occurs, perhaps without a good explanation. When patients unexpectedly die without reason on the show they do not run around calling it a miracle, so it should probably be added that Scrubs defines miracles as being morally good events as well.

    Let us just assume that miracles in this broad sense do happen, that such low-probability events occur and are indeed unexplainable. In this reading, Turk would be using the god hypotheses to explain away the improbable and unexplained good deed that just occurred. Let us even assume that this act would be logically impossible to occur: rather, that the event entails a logical contradiction of natural laws and supernatural forces logically must be at work (assume that this is possible for a moment, fellow sceptics). Even with all these assumptions, it does not follow that Turk should retain his belief in a god. For Turk’s concern was with the gratuitous amount of evil and suffering that he witnesses working in the hospital. The fact that unexplained good occurs fails to account for the unexplained evils that make up P5, and all the premises of the argument from evil remain intact.

    So in the end it seems as though Turk has mastered self-deception. But watching this episode reminded me of reading David Hume’s Dialogues… although Cleanthes is said to come out on top of the debate, the points the Philo makes are left unscathed. I hope the wishy-washy miracle conclusion didn’t stop viewers of this show from considering its earlier reasoning.

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