"Question: What is the opposite of faith?
Not disbelief. Too final, certain, closed. Itself is a kind of belief.
Doubt.
The human condition, but what of the angelic? Halfway between Allahgod and homosap, did they ever doubt? They did: challenging God's will one day they hid muttering beneath the Throne, daring to ask forbidden things: antiquestions. Is it right that. Could it not be argued. Freedom, the old antiquest. He calmed them down, naturally, employing management skills a la god. Flattered them: you will be the instruments of my will on earth, the salvationdamnation of man, all the usual etcetera. And hey presto, the end of protest, on with the haloes, back to work. Angels are easily pacified; turn them into instruments and they'll play your harpy tune. Human beings are tougher nuts, can doubt anything, even the evidence of their own eyes. Of behing-their-own-eyes. Of what, as they sink heavy-lidded, transpires behind closed peepers ... angels, they don't have much in the way of a will. To will is to disagree; not to submit; to dissent."
— Salman Rushdie (The Satanic Verses)*
What I was getting towards in my last post was that the NSLF really made me think a lot about my so-called faith. And it made me wonder if I’m having a bit of an atheist’s crisis of faith.
No, I’m kidding. I’m not really having a crisis of faith. But I am struggling a bit with what I believe, or what I can conceive of (which reminds of me of TOK: can you believe something you can’t justify, or know something you can’t/don’t believe? Who thought I’d ever quote TOK again!)
I’m an Evolutionist. Darwinism seemed a solid foundation for my atheism. My basic biology schooling enables me to comprehend (at least in abstract) the randomness that led to the Big Bang (some accidental collision of molecules), and similarly the first organisms that lived on Earth when it was all gas and hostile.
But what boggles my mind is the very existence of humans. I can theoretically believe that we walked down from the trees when we were monkeys. So to speak. I understand survival of the fittest. But when I think about all that we’ve accomplished – roads, cars, factories, industry, computers, cities, planes – I wonder how it’s all possible. I mean, apart from due to our brains. I don’t mean that we’re superior to other species, we’re simply more advanced and complex in some key technological ways (probably to do with our hands.)
We live in one galaxy of goodness knows how many. And we happen to live on the one planet hospitable to our needs – water, oxygen, food. We’re the right distance from the sun that it’s more or less the right temperature we can live in.
This means I’m not closed to the idea of life on other planets – I mean, if we evolved, either because of our planet’s provisions or in spite of them, who’s to say other life forms can’t? But in the grand scheme of things – to imagine the whole universe is enough to blow my mind, but even compared to this galaxy – humans are less than infinitesimal.
But sometimes it doesn’t seem beyond grasp that we are just someone’s dream. The idea of time stretching out for infinity – the concept of infinity itself – is just stupefying to me.
x
JAG
*Ahem. Lest it should appear that I am much more intellectual than I seem, I have not actually read this. (Yet.) All credit to Sharan, who brought this quote to my attention on her blog. I love the idea of angels doubting. Reminds me of Supernatural. Shh, I have a little thing for the Holy Tax Accountant.
4 comments:
So many comments come to mind. But I will speak only one: NO! NO! NO! NO! I hate it when the Christian conservatives use "Darwinist" and "Evolutionist" to refer to those who really take issue with the whole "Genesis is a historical record" idea, and it's even worse when a self-described "Evolutionist" does it.
The theory of natural selection, and its cousin evolutionary theory, are not things you believe in. They are scientific theories; that is to say, explanations of cause-and-effect relationships that can be tested by experiments and backed by empirical data.
There's no such thing as "evolutionism." There's no set doctrine or holy writ. That's the wonderful thing about science. It's an ever-changing attempt to describe our natural world. Whether or not you "believe" in evolution, or rather, whether or not you believe evolution is the most viable explanation of our planet's biodiversity and humanity's current status, doesn't matter!
Science continues all the same. No one says "I'm a Relativist!" even though the Theories of Special and General Relativity are used daily in our cars and our planes and okay, pretty much everything.
Similarly, it seems nonsensical to say you're an "Evolutionist." That terminology puts the pseudo-debate squarely in the field of religion, where the Creationists (an appropriate term precisely because their theories are actually holy writ) have a home team advantage.
-jdl
P.S. You're also making a logical fallacy at the end there. Yes, the sheer improbability of humanity and our daily interactions blows my mind. It's incredible! A secular miracle in and of itself. But, when you say "we happen to live on the one planet with water and etc.," you're assuming we could live on any other.
By the very definition of what life on earth is, however, we couldn't evolve on any other planet. If there wasn't an Earth, WE wouldn't be here to marvel at its existence. :P
I just wanted to point out one little thing: we don't happen to live on a planet hospitable to our needs--life evolved on this particular planet because it had the right conditions for living organisms.
Thinking about the infinity of the universe is definitely mind-boggling, but less so than the idea of a deity who created all of us just to fuck with us is to me. I honestly don't understand who the concept of gods makes any sense. But that's just how I see things.
@jdl: unfortunately, science is almost never as certain as it seems to be (or we would like to believe). I just watched Andrew Denton interview Richard Dawkins on Elders, which was very interesting. Dawkins defined belief as "a strong conviction based on evidence," which I entirely agree wit, and think can be aptly applied to science. Science can prove some things, sure, but these theories are called just that because though they can be proved beyond reasonable doubt, they can't be proved infinitely (or indefinitely, I suppose). It takes only one experiment to disprove a theory, which is why they aren't facts.
Furthermore, to what extent can we ever KNOW something? In science, there are lots of things we thought we knew that turned out to be wrong.
I'm not trying to undermine science, but simply suggest that science, too, has its fallacies.
@Arielle: I whole-heartedly agree with your second statement about the concept of gods, why they would create us, why they would care.
x
JAG
PS: jdl, your comments remind me of a Friends scene in which Ross is trying to convince Phoebe of evolution (he uses your phrase "evolution is not something you can choose to believe in") and she says "yes, but isn't there the teeniest, tiniest chance you could be wrong?" Ross submits that, yes, there could be to which she says "why would you abandon your beliefs so quickly?" It was quite amusing ;)
x
JAG
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