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This is going to require some introduction in the form of IRC chat logs:
<Nathicana> Well, like I said - I understand where she's coming from, and no, I don't think it's fair either. Thing she's coming up against is 'in the bible God interfered all the time, why not now?'.
<Scolopendra> I suppose the real answer won't help.
<Nathicana> Heh - an what's the 'real' answer there? ;)
<Scolopendra> The Bible was written by a bunch of sheepshagging dirtfarming nomads who were at constant peril from their environment. They made up stories to explain how and why things happened, and, upon understanding the stories, decided they understood about the events so they didn't seem so threatening. The tribal elders used their god as a way to rally their people in the fight against other tribes and maintain social order--not necessarily intentionally, mind, but out of a stand alone complex of emergent behavior. As history progressed and mankind eventually developed first mastery and then dominance over his environment, the ability to ascribe earthquakes and whatnot as divine judgment lost power in the popular consciousness. It also became much more apparent that it is the work of men, not gods, that lead to human successes. Winning a battle was a matter of having superior strategy, armaments, or dumb luck rather than the direct intervention of a supernatural being.
<Nathicana> So you don't believe that miracles ever happened, or happen? Just out of curiousity.
<Scolopendra> Thus, the Age of Miracles was exactly that--a miracle is simply a benefit not understood; now our miracles are one of science. Give a few generations, and a faith healing of a psychosomatically near-blind but still functional man back to full functionality becomes scales falling from dry husks of eyes dead since birth. The crossing of the Red Sea was probably actually the crossing of a sort of thick marsh next to the Red Sea that floods with the tides (I forget the name of it). The Israelites passed over it on foot; the Egyptian chariots got bogged down and were washed away with the tide.
<Nathicana> I don't mean any of my questions to come off as attacks, so please bear that in mind. I'm honestly interested in other opinions. In your opinion, my feeling that attending church and being 'uplifted' and my week just seeming to go better is coincidence and self-delusion, not the aftereffct of anything spiritual in nature?
<Scolopendra> No, but probably because my definition of 'spiritual' is probably different from yours. Clearly, going to church resonates with you on some sort of basic, fundamental level. This makes it true. Faith, honor, duty, courage, mercy, compassion... these are all, in terms of actual physical things, non-entities. To say that they exist as fundamental natural objects is a lie. They are, however, important lies made true by human action and thought. Something need not be true for it to be worth believing in.
<Nathicana> I'm not sure I find that very comforting in the end.
And now, as they say, the rest of the story...
How I look at it, the really spiritual thing is that people can make up things that don't exist, very good things, and then believe in them as if they were a priori forces and do wonderful things because of them. I call it spiritual because it is the very definition of thumbing one's nose at a dead clockwork orange reality made of nothing but physical truths. I believe in a god. Does it exist? Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. It certainly isn't going to give me a sack of money or give me cancer; those are worldly things that simply happen. It will, however, make me feel more comfortable in the belief that it exists and so, in the end, it's philosophical truth value is not important; it's personal truth value is.
We believe that the individual person has value that compares to that of the whole society--the needs of the many do not necessarily outweigh the needs of the few or the one. Is this adamantly true? How can it be? We make it true, even when it isn't. We believe that all should be equal under the rule of law. That people deserve education. That people's lives should be cherished and protected whenever possible. That all people are, essentially, equal. These are exactly the same things. I'm faster than you are; you're a better artist than I am. These are inequalities, we are not equal people. Yet, we believe fervently that we are, so we are. I consider this a good thing.
I know it's a highly idealistic viewpoint, but the Truth is highly overrated. The Truth changes, the Truth is hidden, the Truth generally turns out to be less exciting than we think it will be. Of course, the Truth has to be recognized, and in an absurd universe where the difference between the angel Gabriel talking to Mohammed and the angel Moroni talking to Smith is a matter of fluid culture, the only universal Truth is that objecti ve reality which science attempts to plumb, and science, by its very nature, can only make clockwork oranges. It's an insufficient Truth to be human in, so we have our Ideals and our Ideas, which become a more important "truth," more true to us than the potentially depressing Truth that we're just the result of chaotic interactions between particles and energy. This is how we give a clockwork orange life.
Even if we are truly nothing but the emergent action of particles and energy, we still feel love, hate, joy, sadness, pleasure, and pain. These are real feelings with very little to do with the neurochemistry that makes them up. Dopamine is not sedate contentedness. Electrochemical activity in the hypothalamus is not bowel-knitting terror. They produce these, yes, but what causes a sensation and what is sensed are two very different things, especially when talking about the viewpoint of sentient observers whose reactions run the entire continuum of human existence.
It comes to pass that we see the world and find it a dead collection of chemical reactions. We call that a tree, and that a fox, and that a dragonfly, and we call them beautiful, and they are. We find that we are merely animals with a high brain-to-body mass ratio and highly complex central nervous systems. We could eat and sleep and copulate as animals do, and sometimes, sadly, we do--but instead we make up words: honor, family, mercy, compassion, lo ve, decency, and we become more than what we are, even if we fail at living up to these made up but important words. We see that we are but a couple dozen kilograms of carbon in a universe of numbers we can count, but not comprehend, and thus our importance on any sort of universal scale is nil. But, we imagine that there are gods, and demons, and spirits, and things unknowable that take interest of us and that makes us important and it gives us the emotional strength to carry on in a universe where existence precedes purpose.
Even those who reject gods and demons accept things like country, species, environment, good, justice, right, freedom... which are practically just as imaginary (in the case of "freedom" and "justice") as gods or just as meaningless (in the case of "species" and "environment") as we are. Yet, somehow, they are given power and made into more than what they are if mere Truth were involved.
Humans desire purpose
of one form or another. They are social animals, and a desire for purpose
aids them in being sociable. We are more than other animals, though. We can
feel guilty for eating. We can feel bad for surviving. Mere survival of the
individual or the species is insufficient for us emotionally and psychologically.
It may be completely absurd. It may have no "real" meaning--but
if that's true, what great arbiter is there to pass judgment? If there is
no God, who's going to point and laugh and say "look at the silly monkeys
acting silly?"
Pragmatically, the only other option to making stuff up is to be
animals of the fields (or the trees). Pragmatically, if there is no God, we
are still here, we still think and feel. Let us spin the tales and tell
the noble lies that make us as people and species better, that bring us as
people and humanity closer together, and mere Truth be damned.
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