Closer To Truth: Theological Realms: Part One
There is an ongoing PBS TV series (also several books and also a website) called €Closer To Truth€. It is hosted by neuroscientist Robert Lawrence Kuhn. He's featured in one-on-one interviews and panel discussions with the cream of the cream of today's cosmologists, physicists, philosophers, theologians, psychologists, etc. on all of the Big Questions surrounding a trilogy of broad topics - Cosmos; Consciousness; Meaning. The trilogy collectively dealt with reality, space and time, mind and consciousness, aliens, theology and on and on and on. Here are a few of my comments on the general topics that cover theological concepts.
What Causes Religious Belief?
There apparently is no evidence, far less proof that any living species, apart from the human species, has or exhibits any sort of religious belief. So what exclusively causes religious belief in most, obviously not all, humans? I suspect it has an awful lot to do with the phrase "what's in it for me?". I mean if you thought you couldn't personally benefit, or maybe believe that others wouldn't benefit too as part of any hypothetical religious belief you held, then there would seem to be little point in investing a lot of time and energy (and maybe money) in believing in a religion of any kind. However, the "what's in it for me" apple dangles just in front of a hungry you. At one fundamental level, religious belief allegedly gives you an afterlife in paradise. If you believe in the power of positive prayer and miracles, then more likely as not you want the results of positive prayer and miracles to apply to you (and selected others), after all, you're doing all the hard work! So you pray to pass those final exams. You pray to stay free of cancer, but if that doesn't work you pray that your cancer will be miraculously cured. Those wishes would of course extend to your immediate family as well, so not all religious belief is of necessity and exclusively for your own benefit. Still, you have a vested interest in your immediate family. Sometimes religious belief comes cart-before-horse. You would obviously exercise your horse-before-cart religious belief if a tornado was bearing down on you, but if you had no such conviction and a tornado did bear down on you and you survived, you just might then become a true believer as an alternative explanation to survival via blind luck. If you think you will benefit from a religion, or have benefited from a religion, then you will be prone to 'see the light', convert, and have an ongoing belief in that religion.
Religious Faith: Rational or Rationalization?
If, as I believe (as a matter of faith), that religious faith is rooted in self-interest, the "what's in it for me" concept, then religious faith is a rationalization. You have no rational reason to have religious faith any more than you have a rational reason to have faith in Santa Claus, but you might rationalize lying to your children about the existence of Santa. In the case of your so-called religious faith, you are rationalizing lying to yourself, or perhaps rationalizing to yourself that maybe, just maybe, it's not really all a lie and that my self-interest in adopting a religion might really pay off.
Can Many Religions All Be True?
I would have thought that this was a clear cut and dried issue. If people hold various belief systems that are mutually exclusive, that are polar opposites, that are contradictory, then not all of those belief systems can be correct. You cannot both believe in monotheism, and in polytheism. One or the other or neither must be the case. Some people believe there will be an afterlife. Some people believe that death is final. Both belief systems cannot be true; one must be false. Now all of that presupposes that we exist in a really real cosmos where outcomes are either/or. Now if we 'live' in a Simulated (Virtual Reality) Universe then anything goes. There is a software program for monotheism; there is another software program for polytheism. Christians may get a simulated afterlife in a virtual heaven; others have their software program terminate and they don't get another afterlife software program to replace it. In a simulation, all belief systems can be catered to and all belief systems can be true.
Do Science & Religion Conflict?
One clear way that science and religion conflict is with respect to many of the events as told in the Bible. If Eve was created from Adam's rib, Eve received male genetics and should have been a male; Adam's clone. If Jesus was born via a virgin's birth, then all of his genetic material would have been female in origin. Jesus should have been a woman. Noah's flood is pure fiction since how could the flightless New Zealand kiwi bird get from New Zealand to the Middle East in time to hop on board? Where did all of that extra water come from - and go? And the Ark wasn't nearly big enough to house two of every animal species on Earth as well as store all the foodstuffs required; plants, bushes and trees, vegetation that couldn't survive for very long underwater, would have to be on board as well. And there wasn't hardly sufficient manpower on board to feed and clean up after all of those critters. Did I mention that the Bible mentions unicorns? And what about all of those really, really, really old age pensioners. It wasn't just Methuselah that lived well past his expiry or use-by date. What odds do you give that you could live inside the belly of any type of aquatic creature for three days and survive to tell the [tall] tale? Then there is this whopper - the Sun and Moon stood still in the sky at the command of Joshua. Now that would imply that the Earth suddenly stopped rotating on its axis. I'm sure anyone who is even slightly scientifically literate would know the catastrophic results that would transpire if the Earth suddenly stopped rotating and stood still. Even if that were possible how do you get it going again? So, just these few examples alone bring science and religion into conflict, or at least into conflict for those who believe that the Bible is absolutely God's true word; literally true in every way. Unfortunately, such fundamentalist believers, creationists, haven't yet gone the way of the dodo and appear happy to keep the science versus religion conflict an ever ongoing one.
Is This the Best of All Possible Worlds?
If this is the best of all possible worlds, then the creator of this world screwed up big time! That aside, it's difficult to imagining best without being able to also imagine better. In some contexts one can imagine best without being able to imagine better - a perfect game pitched in baseball; a royal flush in poker; achieving 100% on an exam; winning an Academy Award perhaps, but such scenarios tend to have fixed rules and parameters. There doesn't seem to be a rulebook for creating worlds that can be scored as 100% perfect. Can one ever create a world where one can't go beyond best to better-than-best? In any event, best can be, and usually is, a relative term. What's best for me is not of necessity best for you and vice versa. If this were the best of all possible worlds everybody would be equally best in everything and that of course is an absurd concept.
Do Angels and Demons Exist?
I put no stock in the existence of supernatural entities though I do subscribe to the philosophy that underneath every mountain of mythology, especially mythologies that cut across nearly all human cultures and historical eras, there is a molehill of fact. Now under the Fermi Paradox, "Where is everybody?", it is just about certain that ET has visited, noted and logged, even explored our Third Rock from the Sun - Planet Earth - in the geological, even historical past. As Arthur C. Clarke has pointed out, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, or the supernatural, to those less technological. So angels and demons are just run-of-the-mill flesh-and-blood mortal extraterrestrials, or 'ancient astronauts', mistaken for supernatural entities by 'primitive' human
What Causes Religious Belief?
There apparently is no evidence, far less proof that any living species, apart from the human species, has or exhibits any sort of religious belief. So what exclusively causes religious belief in most, obviously not all, humans? I suspect it has an awful lot to do with the phrase "what's in it for me?". I mean if you thought you couldn't personally benefit, or maybe believe that others wouldn't benefit too as part of any hypothetical religious belief you held, then there would seem to be little point in investing a lot of time and energy (and maybe money) in believing in a religion of any kind. However, the "what's in it for me" apple dangles just in front of a hungry you. At one fundamental level, religious belief allegedly gives you an afterlife in paradise. If you believe in the power of positive prayer and miracles, then more likely as not you want the results of positive prayer and miracles to apply to you (and selected others), after all, you're doing all the hard work! So you pray to pass those final exams. You pray to stay free of cancer, but if that doesn't work you pray that your cancer will be miraculously cured. Those wishes would of course extend to your immediate family as well, so not all religious belief is of necessity and exclusively for your own benefit. Still, you have a vested interest in your immediate family. Sometimes religious belief comes cart-before-horse. You would obviously exercise your horse-before-cart religious belief if a tornado was bearing down on you, but if you had no such conviction and a tornado did bear down on you and you survived, you just might then become a true believer as an alternative explanation to survival via blind luck. If you think you will benefit from a religion, or have benefited from a religion, then you will be prone to 'see the light', convert, and have an ongoing belief in that religion.
Religious Faith: Rational or Rationalization?
If, as I believe (as a matter of faith), that religious faith is rooted in self-interest, the "what's in it for me" concept, then religious faith is a rationalization. You have no rational reason to have religious faith any more than you have a rational reason to have faith in Santa Claus, but you might rationalize lying to your children about the existence of Santa. In the case of your so-called religious faith, you are rationalizing lying to yourself, or perhaps rationalizing to yourself that maybe, just maybe, it's not really all a lie and that my self-interest in adopting a religion might really pay off.
Can Many Religions All Be True?
I would have thought that this was a clear cut and dried issue. If people hold various belief systems that are mutually exclusive, that are polar opposites, that are contradictory, then not all of those belief systems can be correct. You cannot both believe in monotheism, and in polytheism. One or the other or neither must be the case. Some people believe there will be an afterlife. Some people believe that death is final. Both belief systems cannot be true; one must be false. Now all of that presupposes that we exist in a really real cosmos where outcomes are either/or. Now if we 'live' in a Simulated (Virtual Reality) Universe then anything goes. There is a software program for monotheism; there is another software program for polytheism. Christians may get a simulated afterlife in a virtual heaven; others have their software program terminate and they don't get another afterlife software program to replace it. In a simulation, all belief systems can be catered to and all belief systems can be true.
Do Science & Religion Conflict?
One clear way that science and religion conflict is with respect to many of the events as told in the Bible. If Eve was created from Adam's rib, Eve received male genetics and should have been a male; Adam's clone. If Jesus was born via a virgin's birth, then all of his genetic material would have been female in origin. Jesus should have been a woman. Noah's flood is pure fiction since how could the flightless New Zealand kiwi bird get from New Zealand to the Middle East in time to hop on board? Where did all of that extra water come from - and go? And the Ark wasn't nearly big enough to house two of every animal species on Earth as well as store all the foodstuffs required; plants, bushes and trees, vegetation that couldn't survive for very long underwater, would have to be on board as well. And there wasn't hardly sufficient manpower on board to feed and clean up after all of those critters. Did I mention that the Bible mentions unicorns? And what about all of those really, really, really old age pensioners. It wasn't just Methuselah that lived well past his expiry or use-by date. What odds do you give that you could live inside the belly of any type of aquatic creature for three days and survive to tell the [tall] tale? Then there is this whopper - the Sun and Moon stood still in the sky at the command of Joshua. Now that would imply that the Earth suddenly stopped rotating on its axis. I'm sure anyone who is even slightly scientifically literate would know the catastrophic results that would transpire if the Earth suddenly stopped rotating and stood still. Even if that were possible how do you get it going again? So, just these few examples alone bring science and religion into conflict, or at least into conflict for those who believe that the Bible is absolutely God's true word; literally true in every way. Unfortunately, such fundamentalist believers, creationists, haven't yet gone the way of the dodo and appear happy to keep the science versus religion conflict an ever ongoing one.
Is This the Best of All Possible Worlds?
If this is the best of all possible worlds, then the creator of this world screwed up big time! That aside, it's difficult to imagining best without being able to also imagine better. In some contexts one can imagine best without being able to imagine better - a perfect game pitched in baseball; a royal flush in poker; achieving 100% on an exam; winning an Academy Award perhaps, but such scenarios tend to have fixed rules and parameters. There doesn't seem to be a rulebook for creating worlds that can be scored as 100% perfect. Can one ever create a world where one can't go beyond best to better-than-best? In any event, best can be, and usually is, a relative term. What's best for me is not of necessity best for you and vice versa. If this were the best of all possible worlds everybody would be equally best in everything and that of course is an absurd concept.
Do Angels and Demons Exist?
I put no stock in the existence of supernatural entities though I do subscribe to the philosophy that underneath every mountain of mythology, especially mythologies that cut across nearly all human cultures and historical eras, there is a molehill of fact. Now under the Fermi Paradox, "Where is everybody?", it is just about certain that ET has visited, noted and logged, even explored our Third Rock from the Sun - Planet Earth - in the geological, even historical past. As Arthur C. Clarke has pointed out, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, or the supernatural, to those less technological. So angels and demons are just run-of-the-mill flesh-and-blood mortal extraterrestrials, or 'ancient astronauts', mistaken for supernatural entities by 'primitive' human