Materialism has an irresistible logic. How do we know something is real unless another person can independently verify it? Real stuff must be objectively represent-able. Measurability is the acid test for reality. Atoms and galaxies pass the test but mind doesn’t. Mind is a mere shadow cast by the complexity of brain chemistry. '
There are serious objections. Even the most mundane of experience is not the same as its description. Some of our feelings cannot be described in words at all. Reality appears to have a component that cannot be captured in objective descriptions.
That is all fine, the materialist would say. How do you prove such personal experience is real? How is your ‘spiritual experience’ different from mere hallucination? Can you point out the reality of your claims to a skeptic and convince him?
This is a very deep question – Are there real stuff that are truly beyond science? Does nature include aspects that cannot be understood objectively? This is answered in one of the following ways:
1. Yes. Nature has aspects that are beyond science (one must have faith in a supernatural God).
2. No. Science can completely explain nature, given enough time and resources.
3. We will never know, but all that is knowable is what comes to us through science and there is no point in speculating what lies beyond.
4. Yes. Nature has aspects beyond objective description. These are accessible to man through direct experience and there is nothing supernatural about it.
I have always felt the presence of unexplainable in my experience. It’s only my subjective feeling, yet too real to be ignored. How can I establish the reality of my ‘purely subjective’ experience?
Let us see how far we can go with the materialist position - measurable or quantifiable things alone are real. There is no mind stuff. What we call mind is an epiphenomenon, an echo of the chemical noise in the neurons. Yet there is one thing undeniable- the fact that we have all these knowledge. How did man come to have knowledge? What is the mechanism of knowing? Vision is associated with eyes and a complex mechanism involving cornea, lens, retina, optic nerves and vision neurons. Is there a similar mechanism for knowing?
‘Knowing’ has something to do with mind. But wait for a moment – we have ruled out mind as a mere echo. ‘Knowing’ has something to do with brain. Human brain must have a unique knowledge producing mechanism. Let us treat it as a black box. The gears and valves are hidden for the moment, but its output is real, objective knowledge.
How can this black box be studied?
Man alone, of all creatures, possess objective knowledge. How did man come have such knowledge? Where did this black box come from? Remember we are attempting to (objectively) know the mechanism of objectivity. One possibility is to look into its evolutionary history (I suspect this is the only way to avoid the trap of self-referencing. History offers another level of objectivity in this unique case of knower trying to know itself).
Evolution forms the background to understand everything related to living things – including knowledge. Do we see a history of knowledge in evolution? Other bodily functions such as vision have a history. Human eyes evolved from primitive light sensitive cells. How about the knowledge producing black box?
We have our theories of knowing, but such theories always begin with human civilizations. Our history of knowledge is the history of rationality. We find it unimaginable that reality can be effectively tackled without “getting out” and forming an objective view, yet this is how life flourished for 3.5 billion years. There are colors invisible to our eyes and sounds inaudible our ears. Is there knowledge beyond our black box?
An evolutionary worldview must have place for pre-rational modes of comprehension. A series of ‘tools of comprehension’ must have emerged in nature. Rational mind is the latest addition to this collection. If man is the product of a 3.5 billion year long evolutionary process, he cannot claim superiority for his ‘knowing’. It is just one of the ways to comprehend certain aspects of reality. On the other hand, ‘Science is the only way to knowledge’ sits much more comfortably with creationism. A world created by God is consistent with comprehension beginning with human beings.
We need to have an epistemology going all the way back to the first living cell. Direct experience and intuition should be recognized as valid modes of comprehension, supplementing rationality. This could be the way to a truly religious worldview.
Friday, March 9, 2012
Knowledge and Ignorance
Man is driven by the need to create patterns from his experience of reality. Pattern seeking is instinctive to human beings. It is the driving force behind our search for meaning and order. Individuals pick up a variety of ‘pattern forming techniques’ through education and social conditioning. Such skills are used to comprehend and connect the multitude of experiences, to form meaningful patterns out of the cacophony of sensory inputs.
Every culture has ground rules to guide its members in this task. For example, ‘survival of fittest’ decides the course of biological evolution has emerged as a key guiding principle in modern societies. Unfortunately, most popular of such ground rules contradict each other. It is not surprising because these are derived from mutually exclusive sources of scientific knowledge and religious faith. Experience is compartmentalized, creating conflicts in both personal and social interactions. Patterns emerging out of our times are distorted and contradictory.
Imagine an arithmetic system based on the assumption 1+1 = 3. Building up from here, no amount of hard work or ingenuity will produce results that truly correspond to reality. Mankind is facing a similar crisis today. Our problems originate from a cause that is too fundamental to be solved by present day scientific thinking. We are suffering the consequences of an epistemological error, a serious mistake in comprehending the relationship between Knowledge and Reality.
I believe this is the reason for our failure to integrate subjective and objective aspects of
experience into a meaningful whole. My inner sense of ‘being at harmony with nature’ is as real to me as the force of gravity. Why is it that science has no place for such purely subjective experiences? What is the significance of experiences that cannot be translated into objective expressions?
Any attempt to unify human experience should begin with the question of knowledge. What constitute knowledge and why is it so powerful? Last two centuries saw explosive growth in one type of knowledge, objective knowledge, in the form of science and technology. It is true that our lives are often dominated by 'subjective' knowledge, but we must begin by suspecting its validity. Scientists, using data and reason, can convince any intelligent person to see the truth of their findings. Poets or mystics cannot do that. On the other hand, reason may be truly limited in its explanatory power. What other options do we have? Nothing. Reason is the only path, even when the destination is its outer limits.
We must understand ‘knowledge’ as a product evolution. We must dig into its evolutionary history to understand how it came into being. This is the only way to study ‘knowledge’ objectively. Words such as mind or consciousness cannot be used to explain knowledge because we do not know what this ‘mind’ or ‘consciousness’ is. There is no mind to begin with, only the objective certainty of evolution.
Life evolved from simple self-replicating molecules to monstrously complex trees and animals over a period of 3.5 billion years. ‘Knowing’ simply was not around for almost the entire duration of this growth and proliferation. It is a very recent entry on evolutionary time scale. How did the transition from ‘unknowing ape’ to ‘knowing man’ happen? How did early humans perceive themselves and their environment?
I am sitting comfortably in my office room, typing these words into the computer. There is a beautifully painted jug on the side table. I am aware that it is shaped out of clay, fired in an oven, polished and painted to give me the comfort of storing water. Let me do a thought experiment. I want to travel back in time, to the irrational perplexity of my earliest ancestor. I forget the history of water jugs, chemical composition of clay, structure of atoms, and along with it every bit of knowledge that makes me a civilized human being. I stare at the jug through the emptiness of my mind. Isolated in pre-historic vacuum, far away from the origin of languages, my mind has lost its words. Universe is confined to this remarkably colored object and myself. How do I describe my experience? What is this thing I am staring at? I concentrate on its shape and color, hesitantly stretching hand to explore. I tremble at the feeling of contact with this strange object and withdraw, only to try again and again. What are the secrets of this jug's being? I don't know. Words have flown off, leaving only a smothering vacuum. I do not know how to express my perplexity. What exactly is the thing known to my civilized contemporaries as a jug? What is left in a jug if I empty it of all the ideas and associations that have got into it in the past ten thousand years? I am confronting the puzzle that haunted generations of primitive humans - the task of describing the thing-in-itself.
Our ancestors at the dawn of awareness encountered a puzzling world. This puzzle was partially solved with the invention of language. Emerging human rationality found that the easiest way to deal with a mystery is to cover it up. Early man attempted to tame the unknowable thing-in-itself by giving it a name. Act of naming is the most basic form of objective knowing. Names are objective entities for the group of people who share this knowledge. The wild, fearful thing that pounces on the hunter became an objective fact after it was named 'qxzitlntol' - something that can be spoken of and planned against. Real objects are mysterious and unknowable. Knowing is an act of de-mystification, a practical trick of concealing the strangeness of unknowns behind a veil called knowledge.
Who does this covering up? We can identify an agent, a part of ourselves with the task of exploring and covering up the mystery of things. Let us call this agent 'demystifier'. Let us dump words such as consciousness, awareness and rationality into this black box. ‘Demystifier’ is functionally similar to other sense organs such as the eye or ear. We can possibly open up this black box and explore its contents later, after we are convinced about its reality and function.
We are not cooking up something mysterious here. There was a point in time, not far from the appearance of human species in the history of evolution, when objective knowledge did not exist. Contrast this situation with the present. What happened between these two points of time? We are looking for natural explanations and it is sensible to view objective knowledge as the output of an organ, similar to other sense organs we are endowed with. We do not know anything about the structure or mechanism of this sense organ at this point. It is a black box, definable in terms of its output, which is indeed real. Thus 'demystifier' is simply a label attached to a new function that evolved in human beings, possibly over few hundred thousand years. It evolved as the ‘organ of knowing’, just as eyes evolved as the ‘organ of seeing’.
Demystification proceeded in stages. Man mastered the trick of naming and extinguished the mystery of reality by naming everything around. Noun forms thus conceived were tied up at various levels of interrelationship, resulting in complex language structures. Names were useful in shielding infant awareness from the threat of unknowing. It helped survival by making communication possible. The roots of our knowledge go back to the primitive fear that confronted earliest man facing a world of things-in-themselves.
Knower grew bolder with accumulated experience of many generations and 'name covers' were slowly lifted to take a fresh look at the mystery behind. The substance named ‘clay’ was found to be a mixture of chemical compounds A, B, C etc, which were in turn smaller packets of mystery. Early science thrived on the identification of such constituent parts and patterns of their interaction. Unknowability was pushed back by another step. Subsequent stages of demystification have produced fruitful branches in the tree of science - Atomic physics and Quantum mechanics.
It is amazing that beautiful patterns emerge from such 'externalized knowledge'. That tells something about the nature of reality and its relation with the knower. Why is nature comprehensible to human observers? We should first gain some insight into the nature of the ‘demystifier’ before this all-important question can be explored.
We know that our eyes have a limited range. There are real things that would remain forever invisible to the naked eye. Is it likely that nature has properties that would remain forever beyond the ‘demystifier’? Such a conclusion appears reasonable if we accept the knower as a product of biological evolution. We are forever attempting to hold the unknowable thing-in-itself by grasping it with our tool of objective knowing. We detect newer patterns with every attempt, adding another layer to our interpretation of reality.
What exactly is going on? Unknowability goes into hiding behind the growing façade of certainty. Man has built his majestic edifice of knowledge on the foundation of a terrifying mystery. Our ancestors were aware of this fundamental ignorance. It was their wisdom, a legacy that modern man has disclaimed.
Every culture has ground rules to guide its members in this task. For example, ‘survival of fittest’ decides the course of biological evolution has emerged as a key guiding principle in modern societies. Unfortunately, most popular of such ground rules contradict each other. It is not surprising because these are derived from mutually exclusive sources of scientific knowledge and religious faith. Experience is compartmentalized, creating conflicts in both personal and social interactions. Patterns emerging out of our times are distorted and contradictory.
Imagine an arithmetic system based on the assumption 1+1 = 3. Building up from here, no amount of hard work or ingenuity will produce results that truly correspond to reality. Mankind is facing a similar crisis today. Our problems originate from a cause that is too fundamental to be solved by present day scientific thinking. We are suffering the consequences of an epistemological error, a serious mistake in comprehending the relationship between Knowledge and Reality.
I believe this is the reason for our failure to integrate subjective and objective aspects of
experience into a meaningful whole. My inner sense of ‘being at harmony with nature’ is as real to me as the force of gravity. Why is it that science has no place for such purely subjective experiences? What is the significance of experiences that cannot be translated into objective expressions?
Any attempt to unify human experience should begin with the question of knowledge. What constitute knowledge and why is it so powerful? Last two centuries saw explosive growth in one type of knowledge, objective knowledge, in the form of science and technology. It is true that our lives are often dominated by 'subjective' knowledge, but we must begin by suspecting its validity. Scientists, using data and reason, can convince any intelligent person to see the truth of their findings. Poets or mystics cannot do that. On the other hand, reason may be truly limited in its explanatory power. What other options do we have? Nothing. Reason is the only path, even when the destination is its outer limits.
We must understand ‘knowledge’ as a product evolution. We must dig into its evolutionary history to understand how it came into being. This is the only way to study ‘knowledge’ objectively. Words such as mind or consciousness cannot be used to explain knowledge because we do not know what this ‘mind’ or ‘consciousness’ is. There is no mind to begin with, only the objective certainty of evolution.
Life evolved from simple self-replicating molecules to monstrously complex trees and animals over a period of 3.5 billion years. ‘Knowing’ simply was not around for almost the entire duration of this growth and proliferation. It is a very recent entry on evolutionary time scale. How did the transition from ‘unknowing ape’ to ‘knowing man’ happen? How did early humans perceive themselves and their environment?
I am sitting comfortably in my office room, typing these words into the computer. There is a beautifully painted jug on the side table. I am aware that it is shaped out of clay, fired in an oven, polished and painted to give me the comfort of storing water. Let me do a thought experiment. I want to travel back in time, to the irrational perplexity of my earliest ancestor. I forget the history of water jugs, chemical composition of clay, structure of atoms, and along with it every bit of knowledge that makes me a civilized human being. I stare at the jug through the emptiness of my mind. Isolated in pre-historic vacuum, far away from the origin of languages, my mind has lost its words. Universe is confined to this remarkably colored object and myself. How do I describe my experience? What is this thing I am staring at? I concentrate on its shape and color, hesitantly stretching hand to explore. I tremble at the feeling of contact with this strange object and withdraw, only to try again and again. What are the secrets of this jug's being? I don't know. Words have flown off, leaving only a smothering vacuum. I do not know how to express my perplexity. What exactly is the thing known to my civilized contemporaries as a jug? What is left in a jug if I empty it of all the ideas and associations that have got into it in the past ten thousand years? I am confronting the puzzle that haunted generations of primitive humans - the task of describing the thing-in-itself.
Our ancestors at the dawn of awareness encountered a puzzling world. This puzzle was partially solved with the invention of language. Emerging human rationality found that the easiest way to deal with a mystery is to cover it up. Early man attempted to tame the unknowable thing-in-itself by giving it a name. Act of naming is the most basic form of objective knowing. Names are objective entities for the group of people who share this knowledge. The wild, fearful thing that pounces on the hunter became an objective fact after it was named 'qxzitlntol' - something that can be spoken of and planned against. Real objects are mysterious and unknowable. Knowing is an act of de-mystification, a practical trick of concealing the strangeness of unknowns behind a veil called knowledge.
Who does this covering up? We can identify an agent, a part of ourselves with the task of exploring and covering up the mystery of things. Let us call this agent 'demystifier'. Let us dump words such as consciousness, awareness and rationality into this black box. ‘Demystifier’ is functionally similar to other sense organs such as the eye or ear. We can possibly open up this black box and explore its contents later, after we are convinced about its reality and function.
We are not cooking up something mysterious here. There was a point in time, not far from the appearance of human species in the history of evolution, when objective knowledge did not exist. Contrast this situation with the present. What happened between these two points of time? We are looking for natural explanations and it is sensible to view objective knowledge as the output of an organ, similar to other sense organs we are endowed with. We do not know anything about the structure or mechanism of this sense organ at this point. It is a black box, definable in terms of its output, which is indeed real. Thus 'demystifier' is simply a label attached to a new function that evolved in human beings, possibly over few hundred thousand years. It evolved as the ‘organ of knowing’, just as eyes evolved as the ‘organ of seeing’.
Demystification proceeded in stages. Man mastered the trick of naming and extinguished the mystery of reality by naming everything around. Noun forms thus conceived were tied up at various levels of interrelationship, resulting in complex language structures. Names were useful in shielding infant awareness from the threat of unknowing. It helped survival by making communication possible. The roots of our knowledge go back to the primitive fear that confronted earliest man facing a world of things-in-themselves.
Knower grew bolder with accumulated experience of many generations and 'name covers' were slowly lifted to take a fresh look at the mystery behind. The substance named ‘clay’ was found to be a mixture of chemical compounds A, B, C etc, which were in turn smaller packets of mystery. Early science thrived on the identification of such constituent parts and patterns of their interaction. Unknowability was pushed back by another step. Subsequent stages of demystification have produced fruitful branches in the tree of science - Atomic physics and Quantum mechanics.
It is amazing that beautiful patterns emerge from such 'externalized knowledge'. That tells something about the nature of reality and its relation with the knower. Why is nature comprehensible to human observers? We should first gain some insight into the nature of the ‘demystifier’ before this all-important question can be explored.
We know that our eyes have a limited range. There are real things that would remain forever invisible to the naked eye. Is it likely that nature has properties that would remain forever beyond the ‘demystifier’? Such a conclusion appears reasonable if we accept the knower as a product of biological evolution. We are forever attempting to hold the unknowable thing-in-itself by grasping it with our tool of objective knowing. We detect newer patterns with every attempt, adding another layer to our interpretation of reality.
What exactly is going on? Unknowability goes into hiding behind the growing façade of certainty. Man has built his majestic edifice of knowledge on the foundation of a terrifying mystery. Our ancestors were aware of this fundamental ignorance. It was their wisdom, a legacy that modern man has disclaimed.
Sunday, March 4, 2012
On Why I returned to God
I am not religious in the traditional sense. I don't believe in a personal God or consider it necessary to visit a particular temple or church for prayers. Neither do I follow some religious organization. Yet I have formed a concept of God, which I consider the most important thing in my life.
I was born in a catholic family. Childhood memories bring vivid images of solemn sunday mornings and colorful church festivities. A loving God looked after us from his heavenly abode while we went about our human ways, laughing, crying, fighting and praying. I believed in such a God for many years.
This image of a Christian God was never at conflict with other possible Gods. In fact my earliest lesson on religious tolerance came from a catholic priest, who explained to our sunday class that 'God is like a fire burning atop a distant hill. There are many paths leading to the summit. Different religions are ways leading to the same final goal'. Together with our God in heaven, other ethereal beings such as angels, demons, djins and village spirits were realities of my childhood.
My irreverence began as an attempt to impress my classmates in our sunday catechism class. 'How can God create Light first and then the Sun?' I was excited at the attention I received as much as puzzled by this illogical act ascribed to my God. The book of Genesis says God created light on the 1st day of creation, but the sun and stars were created only on the 4th day!
Such nagging doubts continued throughout my adolescent years. I moved deeper into naturalistic explanations and new scientific discoveries. Years passed and the God I once loved and feared slowly turned into a distant memory, inseparably linked to other tender images of village life.
I was both saddened and relieved by these developments. Sad because I had a feeling that I am missing something beautiful in life. I had had many long arguments about God with my earliest teacher, my mother, who at first tried to explain God to me in her own simple ways, but later faced my doubts with an impenetrable smile. However irrational her faith appeared to be, it helped her maintain a healthy respect towards all forms of life and to find hope even in most difficult of situations. At the same time I felt relieved, because my juvenile exuberance had began to equate blind faith with intellectual dishonesty.
Later I discovered Charles Darwin. Science is a great liberator. Of all scientific breakthroughs, I consider theory of evolution as the most important because it provides a framework to understand life and ourselves. Earth, stars and galaxies are important subjects of study, but most important of all is life itself. Theory of Evolution establishes indisputably that we are linked to all other forms of life. It is a very powerful as well as beautiful explanation for life.
My doubts returned as I saw more of the world and read more about human history. From the beginning I had a powerful sense of inner meaning. There were brief moments when I felt an overwhelming sense of goodness and harmony. Even though I couldn't communicate this with other people, such experiences were as real to me as wind power or the force of gravity. Slowly I realized that there is no way of relating this subjective reality with the world of atoms and forces.
It took a long time, more than 15 years, to reach this conclusion. Life evolved, but not through natural selection as modern life scientists have us believe. The doctrine of Neodarwinism is a logical black hole. It is possible to understand both the objective and subjective worlds naturally, without invoking cumulative random mutations or a creator God perilously hanging from nowhere.
You could call it whatever you choose. Creativity, God or the universal Mind. This ‘ungraspable’ thing is a property of our universe. My apologies for stating it so bluntly but I cannot think of a better way to express it. Believe me, you could realize this yourself if you begin with an open mind and question your own fundamental assumptions. No need to visit a medium or shut-off your reason. I have tried to explain the path I took through a series of posts on this site.
Imagine digging into the remains of a long lost civilization. How would you feel If you come across a clay tablet engraved with E=MC2 among the ruins? Did this ancient people know about matter-energy relationship? Or did they unknowingly use these symbols to decorate edges of their clay tablets? Is it possible to know something without being aware of it? This is exactly how I felt when I re-read bible 20 years later. I saw that the garden of Eden, virgin birth and death on the cross are myths representing colorful reflections of the movement of biological evolution.
God created us. Like a parrot repeating 'one plus one is two', man for countless generations has been telling himself that God is his source. It is not an article of faith, but an absolute truth. There is no creator except the irrational creative drive inherent in matter. God designed eyes to see itself, hands to touch itself and awareness to know itself. Man must worship this God and make offerings to renew his sacred relationship.
A spider spins its web without realizing the meaning of its labor. If we somehow succeed in asking the spider what it is all about, we might receive only a bewildered look for an answer. Spider's intelligence cannot comprehend the fact that web is essential for its physical survival. Like spiders incapable of seeing the purpose of their web, modern man cannot comprehend the real function of his temples and churches. The activity of building a place of worship is instinctive. We build these magnificent structures without realizing their purpose. Unfortunately we cannot afford the luxury of a spider's bewilderment because we, unlike spiders, are self-aware. We carry the burden of providing rational justifications for our actions. Therefore we invent explanatory stories. Religious myths are such inventions. These stories will always contain some embarrassing twists because worship in fact has no rational justification.
This is my idea of God. I have tried to explain my logic to few others, but with limited success. Most people are too comfortable with what they have been taught to believe. But to keep on questioning with an open mind is a rewarding effort. After all, we spend only a limited time on this beautiful planet. Isn’t it terrible to drift through life without even making an effort to know the most beautiful of truths?
I was born in a catholic family. Childhood memories bring vivid images of solemn sunday mornings and colorful church festivities. A loving God looked after us from his heavenly abode while we went about our human ways, laughing, crying, fighting and praying. I believed in such a God for many years.
This image of a Christian God was never at conflict with other possible Gods. In fact my earliest lesson on religious tolerance came from a catholic priest, who explained to our sunday class that 'God is like a fire burning atop a distant hill. There are many paths leading to the summit. Different religions are ways leading to the same final goal'. Together with our God in heaven, other ethereal beings such as angels, demons, djins and village spirits were realities of my childhood.
My irreverence began as an attempt to impress my classmates in our sunday catechism class. 'How can God create Light first and then the Sun?' I was excited at the attention I received as much as puzzled by this illogical act ascribed to my God. The book of Genesis says God created light on the 1st day of creation, but the sun and stars were created only on the 4th day!
Such nagging doubts continued throughout my adolescent years. I moved deeper into naturalistic explanations and new scientific discoveries. Years passed and the God I once loved and feared slowly turned into a distant memory, inseparably linked to other tender images of village life.
I was both saddened and relieved by these developments. Sad because I had a feeling that I am missing something beautiful in life. I had had many long arguments about God with my earliest teacher, my mother, who at first tried to explain God to me in her own simple ways, but later faced my doubts with an impenetrable smile. However irrational her faith appeared to be, it helped her maintain a healthy respect towards all forms of life and to find hope even in most difficult of situations. At the same time I felt relieved, because my juvenile exuberance had began to equate blind faith with intellectual dishonesty.
Later I discovered Charles Darwin. Science is a great liberator. Of all scientific breakthroughs, I consider theory of evolution as the most important because it provides a framework to understand life and ourselves. Earth, stars and galaxies are important subjects of study, but most important of all is life itself. Theory of Evolution establishes indisputably that we are linked to all other forms of life. It is a very powerful as well as beautiful explanation for life.
My doubts returned as I saw more of the world and read more about human history. From the beginning I had a powerful sense of inner meaning. There were brief moments when I felt an overwhelming sense of goodness and harmony. Even though I couldn't communicate this with other people, such experiences were as real to me as wind power or the force of gravity. Slowly I realized that there is no way of relating this subjective reality with the world of atoms and forces.
It took a long time, more than 15 years, to reach this conclusion. Life evolved, but not through natural selection as modern life scientists have us believe. The doctrine of Neodarwinism is a logical black hole. It is possible to understand both the objective and subjective worlds naturally, without invoking cumulative random mutations or a creator God perilously hanging from nowhere.
You could call it whatever you choose. Creativity, God or the universal Mind. This ‘ungraspable’ thing is a property of our universe. My apologies for stating it so bluntly but I cannot think of a better way to express it. Believe me, you could realize this yourself if you begin with an open mind and question your own fundamental assumptions. No need to visit a medium or shut-off your reason. I have tried to explain the path I took through a series of posts on this site.
Imagine digging into the remains of a long lost civilization. How would you feel If you come across a clay tablet engraved with E=MC2 among the ruins? Did this ancient people know about matter-energy relationship? Or did they unknowingly use these symbols to decorate edges of their clay tablets? Is it possible to know something without being aware of it? This is exactly how I felt when I re-read bible 20 years later. I saw that the garden of Eden, virgin birth and death on the cross are myths representing colorful reflections of the movement of biological evolution.
God created us. Like a parrot repeating 'one plus one is two', man for countless generations has been telling himself that God is his source. It is not an article of faith, but an absolute truth. There is no creator except the irrational creative drive inherent in matter. God designed eyes to see itself, hands to touch itself and awareness to know itself. Man must worship this God and make offerings to renew his sacred relationship.
A spider spins its web without realizing the meaning of its labor. If we somehow succeed in asking the spider what it is all about, we might receive only a bewildered look for an answer. Spider's intelligence cannot comprehend the fact that web is essential for its physical survival. Like spiders incapable of seeing the purpose of their web, modern man cannot comprehend the real function of his temples and churches. The activity of building a place of worship is instinctive. We build these magnificent structures without realizing their purpose. Unfortunately we cannot afford the luxury of a spider's bewilderment because we, unlike spiders, are self-aware. We carry the burden of providing rational justifications for our actions. Therefore we invent explanatory stories. Religious myths are such inventions. These stories will always contain some embarrassing twists because worship in fact has no rational justification.
This is my idea of God. I have tried to explain my logic to few others, but with limited success. Most people are too comfortable with what they have been taught to believe. But to keep on questioning with an open mind is a rewarding effort. After all, we spend only a limited time on this beautiful planet. Isn’t it terrible to drift through life without even making an effort to know the most beautiful of truths?
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