Most of you have heard this tune by Louis Armstrong. It describes our human interaction and the joy we get from that interaction. I plan on addressing topics like these and the tricky task that is presented because of our human condition. It is very difficult to begin to understand and appreciate this world without presuming a design and purpose. However, things are in existence because they work and work intricately. They have come to work because of many failed attempts. Some quotes that I came upon that set the mood for some topics today: Do we need a god?
Does the assumption of a god solve any problems?
and How well do the gods that are believed in function?
are presented below:
Isn’t it enough to see that the garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it, too?
– Douglas Adams
I do not try to imagine a personal God; it suffices to stand in awe at the structure of the world, insofar as it allows our inadequate senses to appreciate it.
– Albert Einstein
Evolution has played and continues to play a significant part in the development of all life. All of our abilities such as touch, the digestion of food, the building of bones and teeth, everything we do, have evolved to its present state over a protracted time period. Consider the eye and the sight it enables.
There is little fossil evidence for eyes of any kind before about 550 million years ago. However, once the capability of sight was expressed as distinction between light and dark through primitive photo sensing cells, complex vision was very rapidly evolved because of the tremendous advantage that sight gave the organisms who developed it, whether prey or predator. In model evolution studies, complex eyes can develop from groups of simple photo-sensing cells in as few at 400,000 years. Then specific changes can be evolved to meet the organism’s needs, such as color vision, focusing mechanism, location, image formation or motion detection. These become better and better over a longer period and follow the changing needs of the species. (For example, an organism can gain or lose color vision if the species change from predator to prey.) The human eye has developed to see in color and most of the conscious vision is color and located in the center of the eye. While our rapid and somewhat unconscious black and white vision is located in a peripheral annulus around the outside of the retina. ( If you are having trouble seeing a dim star, look at it off center, and the rods, which are more sensitive to black and white light, will be used to make the start appear brighter.) In any case, it took at least a million years to get to the point that we could use our vision properly, and we had used other species of humanoids to constantly fine tune our vision to suit our needs.
Why am I going down this road? For several reasons: First, the length of time that was needed to develop and use sight properly was significant. Humans have had time to adapt and evolve sight to fit our needs. Humanoids have been around in various forms for about 8 million years. Our species has been around for about 1 – 2 million. However, during that time our brain has been expanding at an astonishing rate, and only recently has it stopped growing, due to a number of things. However, the primary reason that the cortex stopped growing was the increased death caused by difficult childbirth due to the limited size of the female pelvis. Our brain stopped expanding about 20,000 years ago.
As a result, humans have the highest brain to body mass ratio of any species, followed by porpoises, whales, and a few other mammals. What this means is that unlike most other animals, we have more brain than we need to just run our bodies (heart, muscle control, making proteins, etc.) Those extra brain cells that grew on the outside of our cortex are connected to other cells. The number of connections, which enable thought, grows geometrically with the number of cells. This enables cognitive thought to take place at a more complex level as the number of cells increases. This increase in size of the human brain resulted in a rapid explosion of cognitive thought.
I believe this allowed humans to do something no other species had ever been able to do. We were able to anticipate our own demise a very long time before it was likely to occur. This began some 20 to 40 thousand years ago, and unlike any other asset that we had acquired, like color vision or kidney function, there was no evolutionary compensation factors to mitigate the impact. In terms of our evolutionary stance we were one too many mornings and a thousand miles behind with the onset of our new-found ability.
So here we sit. Realizing that we are going to die with no promise of a continuation of our existence and from a naïve approach it is very scary. However all people did not realize this at the same time. As some people gained the ability for cognitive reasoning, they realized that the process provided much power over the actions of others. Can you imagine the ability you posses today in the recognition that a traffic intersection is unsafe? This is very much straight forward today. A hill, trees in the way, a sharp corner before the intersection, or any number of things along with the proper application of logic will lead any person who has learned how to apply reason to reality that some situations will be dangerous if they understand motion, human reaction time, and a host of other information that we today consider common sense. This same process can be applied to social situations to predict civil unrest, the change of rulers, the coming of war, or any number of things that affect the future, and those people who realized these things before others seem to be soothsayers with apparent magical powers. The first of these people to tap the apparent gift of predicting the future could be viewed as amazing and supernatural.
This is my personal pet theory about how religion was instilled into human society. Religion is a powerful resource and can be made to seem very impressive. And once the gift was practiced and shown to be accurate, it would be undeniably reasonable to the unthinking general population. And just like visual sight was rapidly developed over such a short time because of its practical use, religion’s powerful ability of control to quell the fear of death and provide some abatement of the threat of ultimate demise would be rapidly accepted and nurtured for personal gain.
Of course there are other reasons for the development of religion that were also proffered in Dawkins’ book. Religion “gives consolation and comfort. It fosters togetherness in groups. It satisfies our yearning to understand why we exist.” However, from a Darwinian perspective it is very perplexing. Religious activity wastes so many resources. Lives and time that could be devoted to increasing food supply, to seeking mates, or exploring new boundaries to expand a group’s domain is spent on seemingly useless or destructive activities that are outlined very well in the book. However, religion is present in every human culture, although the range and evolution of belief is quite varied among the human groups and the god or gods believed in have quite a wide degree of variation. Consider Eskimo, American Indian, Jewish, Hindu, Christian, Inca, and other peoples gods. They represent many forms and origins for their deities, but all seek to satisfy the same questions. Who are we, why are we here, and where will we go?
I asked these same questions, Who are we, why are we here, and where will we go?
and I am sure that you did also. I remember being in second grade and fervently stating to myself. How could anybody doubt that there is a God?
Shortly thereafter, my 14-year old cousin drowned in an attempt to save a friend who had fallen into Lake Erie. I remember kneeling at his coffin when I was supposed to be praying. I was thinking instead, You are lucky. You know what happens next.
In observing what my Aunt and Uncle had to go through from their religious community and beginning to piece things together regarding the control, the pressure to expect certain behaviors, and the absurd reasoning that was provided as to why my cousin died, I began to give up the idea of a merciful and just god. Soon thereafter, in third grade, I thought to myself, “How could anybody believe in such a god?” And a long process of evaluation began in which I assessed and evaluated my beliefs. This process has continued throughout my existence and goes on yet. I know I will never know for sure very many things. I also have defined very well what I think is true. One reassuring thought has occupied my mind for a very long time. If I come to understand that something is true that I previously thought was untrue, I will embrace that new recognized truth and hold it as long as I am able.
When I was 17 I wrote this very poor poem. The thought is good even if the meter, rhyming, and prose is not.
Finding God
They see.
Flowers bloom,
And the sun makes a beautiful day,
And people say,
There is a God.
They sit.
A beer can in hand, sandwich on the table
Staring at a box
Says the ox,
Ya, ya, there’s a God.
They suffer.
Aches, pains come uncounted.
Looking toward heaven with empty eyes,
When suffering’s too much to endure,
“There must be a God,” so say the poor.
They believe.
Blindly plodding along,
Be ready. In a mystical way
He’ll return some day,
There is a God, of course.
I say.
Don’t dwindle your time trying to prove.
Decide and then live by this,
And if you’ve chosen wrong,
It won’t be long,
‘til you know the truth.
Sit back. Let go of your thoughts, and place your feet on the floor. Open your mind and let in thoughts of your first thoughts of God and Religion.
Where did these first thoughts come from?
Who did you believe to confirm these thoughts?
Were you able to Maintain the beliefs?
If your beliefs Changed, what caused them to Change? If they did not, why have they remained unchanged?
As you move forward, are you open to change?
The biggest need for religion and god are the thoughts you were just entertaining. Or, maybe I should say, that the need for those things is the fact that you can entertain those thoughts and are unprepared to deal with them. Something similar to being transported onto a planet that has a sun which is a Red or Blue Giant central star, your eyes would have a rough time seeing things correctly. Your eyes were never made for seeing light of that intensity or spectral distribution. You may be able to survive, but you would have to make compensations, something similar to compensations needed when your physical evolutionary progress puts you into place where you have had no feedback that allows you to gradually adapt to the fact that you will not live forever. Most living beings in a healthy state have no reason whatsoever to entertain the thought of being dead. Except for the immediate threat of pain and the instinct to fight or flee, which has already been exercised for as long as the species has been in existence, there is no mandate to consider not being here.
So, how do we deal with the realization of death? Religion and God are immediate solutions: The promise of everlasting life with a supernatural being who loves you; The promise to see all who you know have died; The promise to escape the eventual demise of the body. These are very strong reasons to believe, but there are problems, too. There are a host of problems.
First, there is a strong probability that the reality that you have been privileged to observe and sense will be perverted. Also, there is an almost certain likelihood that you will be exploited by others who will manipulate you and your children to postpone joy or actions that could enrich your life. We see this happen all the time. This is why we have martyrs, crusades, holy wars, and people killing or enslaving other people. These are drastic and dire examples, but everyday life can be affected and exploited.
Is there any hope for overcoming this thrust into consciousness? I believe there is. We must live an examined life. We must understand our beliefs as thoroughly as we can We must assure ourselves that our lives conform with reality as closely as possible. We must know why we believe what we believe, and realize that we must believe certain things because we are unable to understand and know everything. We must learn who and what to trust so we can believe. Solid belief is the basis of a good and worthwhile life. I do not understand gravity, but I really, really believe in it. There are other things I have great faith in as well. However, I do not believe in a conscience supernatural being.
So, where do Atheists go when they die? They go to the same place that everyone else does. They continue to live in the minds and hearts of those who knew them and have loved them. They are brought back with the smiles and expressions in the people with whom they have shared smiles and ideas. And, their faults and hatreds are put forth as well, and help to continue the pain they had once felt. So, love and do as many good things to as many people as you can, but most importantly, do not postpone the joy. Do things of joy while you are here!
Copyright © 2011 Rob Lieb. All Rights Reserved.