Complexity and the Limits of Imagination

I’ve harped on these themes before, but what the heck. It’s only opinionating but I like it.

Two items intertwined in my mind to form the double helix of this thread. One is time travel, the other is an atheist’s conversion to Catholicism. What they both have in common are the twin titles of this post: Complexity, and the Limits of Imagination.

I’ve been guilty many times of indulging in the fantasy of time travel, and have written some stories in the genre, knowing full well how absurd an idea it is, but unable to resist and usually unwilling to look too closely into it. I came across the notion recently (I wish I could remember where, and link to it) about how “time” not only does not exist, but cannot possibly exist. What we have is not “time” as we know it, but an infinity of seemingly concurrent changes taking place around us constantly. All you really need to do is look outside. Let’s assume you can see a tree, and on that tree there are leaves (jjust budding out now, as it’s the beginning of springtime in your clime, let us say). Those leaves are each in their own state – at the moment – and are changing their state, growing, living, fading, dying as they do through the seasons. Now to “go back in time”, each of those leaves would have to revert to the state they were in at that supposed “time”. That’s just one tree. Seriously, that tree not only houses leaves, but bark and trunk and branches, and all of those are made up of atoms, molecules, protons, neutrons, all the way down the line. Each of the subatomic particles forming each of those atoms would need to revert the QUANTUM state they were in at that so-called “time”. Quantum being the operative word, because by definition that state CANNOT BE KNOWN at that level. Add the other trees, the weeds, plants and flowers in your neighborhood, and build up from there the entire world, solar system, galaxy, universe and so on. Of course we can’t even begin to do that. We can’t even begin to imagine the basic elements of that one tree! We might think we can imagine, but even the hardiest imaginer would have to confess, sooner or later, that infinity is hard to count up to. So, while the idea of time travel is fun, it’s also ridiculous. Every “moment” is already Humpty Dumpty, and can already not be put back together again, because it never is together in the first place.

Just because our imaginations are limited does not mean that the thing(s) we’re trying to imagine do not exist. This is perhaps the best argument in favor of the potential existence of God. “It could happen!” (shrug). Who knows? Who can say? A science fiction writer had a near-death experience followed by a conversion experience which led him to find God and start a heated debate on his blog wherein he and atheists engage in dispute. Now, lots of people have conversion experiences, sometimes accompanying crises and sometimes not, and there’s really no reason by one person’s experience should be taken as any sort of proof of anything by anybody else. One of his main arguments reminds me of Niezsche’s warning that “life is no argument, for the conditions of life could include error.” This man says: “You are also implying that the human race, all of whom believe in gods, ghosts, magic and miracles of one sort or another, except for that exquisitely tiny minority of persons who are consistent atheists, just so happened to have all made the same lapse of judgment in the matter of paramount and foundational importance in their lives, and continue to do so”. I wonder if he really wants to include ghosts and magic in the same category as God, but doesn’t a lot of it come down to the limits and restrictions of the human imagination? Base any argument on “what most people believe” and you’ll come perilously close to awarding the definition of “greatness” as being “Justin Bieber”. It’s not a “lapse of judgment” to believe in something. It may just be the way the human mind works. It’s useful. As far as I know, there has never been any independent evidence presented – that is, by a species other than humans. Does any other species of creature in the universe believe in God or is it a human invention? I would be very interested to know what parrots believe in – if faith is of any use to them – or any other creature of this planet, for that matter. I cling to the quaint notion that humans are animals of Earth, sharing most of the same DNA as many other animals, as well as the same habits (eating, sleeping, waking, breathing, dreaming, seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, reproducing and raising our young … stuff like that). It could be that failing to believe in God is a limit of imagination on my part. Or, on the contrary, taking everything you cannot conceive of or understand and assigning it to some one big bucket called God could also be a fail. I’m just going to say, along with Dirty Harry, that “a man’s got to know his limitations”, and leave it at that.

Christmas, alternate version

As a sort of fan fiction I thought about writing an alternate version of the Christmas story. In this version, the Word becomes flesh in the twentieth century, as a black man in apartheid South Africa. He becomes a great leader of men, is arrested and imprisoned for years but finally released, where he becomes the first black president, dismantling the racist state and showing compassion and forgiveness on his former oppressors. He becomes a beloved figure worldwide.

What sort of church would be built on this legacy? A religion of redemption in this world rather than the one to come? A religion of man overcoming, of growing and changing, rather than one of stain and guilt? A vision of a world where God allows completion and fulfillment in this life itself, not requiring another one to come? A cycle, a closure, a life entire. A religion with a happier ending. It would sell, I think. That religion would be popular with the people of the world today.

Reincarnation

If you believe in this, I have one question. How many lifetimes will be enough for you? Twelve? A hundred? A thousand?

Purity, Maturity, Heaven and Hell

Searches for the ‘God gene’ or the ‘evolutionary basis of religion’ are futile pursuits. Religion is nothing more nor less than a projection of the story of human life. What are the main themes? An initial state of innocence or grace, followed by the loss of that condition, which leads to sin and struggle and an eventual permanent condition (eternity) of an unknown quality.

Do we not all experience childhood, adolescence, maturity and death? Innocence and grace are childhood conditions and what spoils them? Adolescence, which is the onset of sexuality, which is tied in so strongly with ‘sin’ it could almost be a synonym, were it not for other aspects of sin which are related to the problems of maturity, which is the struggle to survive. Children are taken care of (generally) by adults – but adults must do anything and everything for food and shelter for themselves and for their children. There is no end to adulthood but death – the permanent unknowable condition that all of us face and go on to.

Heaven is a place of purity – which is to say innocence and grace – our childhood state, a state of pre-sexuality, or non-sexuality. To get to heaven our “souls” must be “purified” – it’s no accident that sexual denial and repression are at the heart of the major religions. For men (for most men) sexuality is also strongly related to women, and the denial and repression of sexuality are very closely connected to the repression, opression and suppression of women. None of this ever works – your celibate priests, your hajibs, your abstinence-only all fail to control sexuality and restore purity. You can’t get to heaven this way but so often it is the only way sought. Even the person known as The Way is depicted as an asexual, pure-as-childhood figure. Uh-uh. It doesn’t work like that.

I often wondered how we go from being so beautiful (as little kids) to beings so ugly (war, crime, rape etc …) and the answer is right in front of us all the time. “We go” through adolescence into adulthood and that is all it is. The journey from purity to maturity is nothing but the story of human development. That ‘original sin’ is merely the animal sexuality which is our birthright and destiny, which nothing can stop and nothing can conquer since, despite all wishes to the contrary, we are animals of this planet, and like all other animals of this planet, we exist to procreate and pass on. The idea that “there must be something more” is the ultimate denial of what we all see and experience quite plainly.

We would often prefer that the childhood state be everlasting – carefree, irresponsible, cared for, loved, nothing to do but play and eat and sleep, asexual, non-working, purity and innocence and grace … sounds like descriptions of heaven pretty much (except for those “high-breasted maidens” promised by the Qu’ran, where heaven is a tad earthier than the Bible’s version). It’s something to look forward to, at least, something to wish for and to dream about.

Stevie Wonder sang that “those who don’t believe will never see the light”.I guess it depends on which light you’re talking about. It was in thinking about that song (Heaven is 10 zillion light years away) and watching my son and his friends approaching the brink of adolescence that helped me to see this particular light. There is no going back to childhood. The road from purity to maturity is a one-way street and religions with their heaven and hell would like so much for this to not be true.

jen’s bumper sticker

my friend’s idea for a bumper sticker, which she was too cowardly to actually do:
“organized religion = organized idiots”

okay, a bit harsh, perhaps

this week’s examples, one sad, one tragic:

some right wingers praying for Senator Byrd’s death worried that their prayers had bounced off Byrd and hit Senator Inhofe instead. If only …

Young boy passed away from some disease. His parents decided one of them should commit suicide to join him in the afterlife so he wouldn’t be lonely. The other one remained to raise their other child.

validate my validation

religion is essentially a form of social organization, so it should be no surprise that the social aspects of the brain get involved! the whole ‘spiritual’ side of the question is kind of a sleight-of-mind magic trick (look over there while we’re controlling you here) (imho)

The Nexus of Sex and Jesus

You come across this kind of thing so often, people who alternate between sex and Jesus, like the songs on a Lenny Kravitz album, like the family values congressmen who are always getting caught with hookers, like a kind of preoccupation carousel. It occurred to me this morning that the two are an intersection of selfishness and selflessness, the inner demands and the outer demands of the world we live in.

The two are hardly separate – you can use apparent selflessness to get the material things you selfishly want (see televangelists), and you can justify self-centeredness in the name of some kind of transcendance (see Jesus himself).

You can use Jesus-like expressions merely in order to get laid (a la Prince or Lenny Kravitz), or use sex as your personal religious experience.

The Dugard kidnapper seemed to alternate between rape and Jesus. As a young man he told one of his victims that he had found Jesus and was going to devote his life to Him, but only after he’d finished with kidnapping and raping her. Lately he claims that Jesus turned his life around after stealing an 11 year old girl, holding her hostage for 18 years while constantly raping her and producing two daughters through her. Can’t blame Jesus for all this, of course, but it’s still an example of that intersection.

A lot of the Monotheisms deals with sexuality – the number one issue being the control and ownership of women, of course, but also the regulation of sexual practices and arrangements (halal and haram), monogamy, sodomy, homosexuality – so much so that it’s clear that the primary function of these religions is social organization rather than anything transcendental. It isn’t only Jesus, in other words, but there is a definite sexual angle to Jesus in particular: his nudity, his bondage, his kidnapping and rape, essentially, by society-at-large.

We see the nexus in the endless procession of preachers with their whores and affairs who end up tearfully confessing, being forgiven, and getting right back up on that horse (so to speak) – the nexus of Jesus and money is another thing entirely.

to be continued …

Fine Lines and How To Cross Them

On a morning talk show (Ronn Owens) the topic was a recent story about a local psychic who was arrested, convicted and sentenced to two months in jail for getting more than a hundred thousand dollars and a sports car from a lady in return for promising to cleanse her of evil spirits. In the county where this occurred, the psychic needed a license (it wasn’t clear from the talk show whether she had one) and therefore the first question was, why was it a crime? She was operating her business, a business the county sanctions with licensing – fortune-telling. The second question was, if the customer was so stupid as to hand over that much money (and the car) for the evil-spirit-cleansing guarantee, why should they be protected by law from their own stupidity. Owens used the word ‘stupid’ over and over again, and compared the psychic’s activities to televangelists who ask for money over the TV in return for getting you into heaven.

The fine line that Owens would not cross (and he’s a fine one for never crossing those fine lines): isn’t he saying that anyone who believes in heaven or hell – and gives money to anyone who offers them salvation – is ‘stupid’? Of course, he wouldn’t go that far. He’s a “moderate” in all things. Why is a televangelist different from any local priest, preacher, church, etc … to whom you give money in return for what they provide you, which usually, in Christianity, comes down to eternal salvation. Which is probably worth more than a hundred thousand dollars, come to think of it, especially when you amortize the money across an infinite number of years (eternity is forever, right?).

Hucksters and those who prey on them ….

Speaking of which, the pope today compared saving humanity from homosexuality to saving the rainforests!

Repeat after me: the pope is a fucking moron.

Then again, that’s his tradition, and you have to respect that :}

Logical Fallacies

This article is about the proposition that ‘religion equals fertility’, that people who are more religious have bigger families, and conversely, that atheists have smaller families. As evidence they examine a few select populations from the 20th century – as if these are representative of the whole of human history. The article, and especially the comments, are an exercise in logical fallacy.

statistics taken from a very short (and quite unique) period of human history are meaningless in any overall context.

There is no more meaningful evidence to support the hypothesis that “religion and fertility are linked” than the correlation between the number of pirates in the world and global warming.

All of the explanations in the article and comments in fact explain nothing.

Doll House Christmas

The pageantry surrounding the Christian holiday has always seemed to me like playing dolls. The dollhouse is the manger set, populated with a heavenly host of imaginary friends. They swaddle the little baby Jesus, and play mommy and daddy with Mary and Joseph. It’s got pets (sheep, goats, etc …), and friends (the three wise men who come with presents. yay!). The people playing with these sets are playing God themselves, and it often reminds me of Philip K. Dick’s ‘The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch’, where adult survivors of nuclear holocaust take drugs (Chew-Z) in order to hallucinogenically inhabit the world of their favorite doll, Perky Pat (while their children pity and ignore them).

It’s not much of a stretch. “Faith” is the drug people use to identify with their own personal Lord and imaginary friend. Even the crucifixion models are dolls, and rosary beads, the bleeding heart. These are all toys. Christmas trees and ornaments are nice little pagan additions to the set (Christianity could never do without its pagan add-ons, from the Easter Bunny to Jolly Saint Nick). More and more toys – and stockings – for the doll house Christmas.

Enjoy! After all, it’s playtime …

Online you can find a selection of Baby Jesus Dolls, but so far I haven’t seen one where you pull a string in the back and it forgives you for all your sins, or anything like that. Perhaps a marketing opportunity? Or maybe just asking for trouble. I especially liked these “high-quality huggable biblical characters”

Jesus

Mary