An Agnostic's Apology

A recent University of Minnesota study suggests that atheists are America's newest hated minority.

As a devout agnostic (if that's possible), I view atheists as being similar to theist religious practitioners, just without the mythology. After all, atheism is a belief: There is no God. Now, while there is no compelling evidence to support the existence of God (and the so-called "design argument" is not evidence), there is also no basis for a logical proof of God's nonexistence. In the absence of evidence on either side, I reserve judgment.

There is something special, it seems, about consciousness and life, but absolutely nothing about those qualities provides any insight into their creation. And whatever sense of wonder exists about the universe, nothing supports the choice of one world religion over another.

Consider the Big Three: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The idea is that God decided to communicate with the inhabitants of this tiny piece of rock in a pretty nondescript part of the universe. He communicated through prophets, and his word was established over a period of several thousand years. Practitioners of the Big Three will agree that each religion is talking about the same God, but the details about what he said differ from religion to religion. In the case of Judaism and Christianity, there is the pivotal disagreement over whether Jesus was the messiah. Christians say yes; Jews say no. Muslims agree that Jesus was a prophet, but they do not accept him as the messiah. Neither Christians nor Jews pay attention to any of the work of Muhammad, and absolutely no one pays any attention to Joseph Smith, the prophet of the Mormons. But this omniscient God, in all his wisdom, must have known that confusion, war, and death would ensue from such mixed signals. Still, he sent the message or messages anyway and let the fun begin. Is this benevolence? Or is it just a scam?

Let A, B, and C be statements that are mutually exclusive and restricted to either a value of "true" or "false." The statements are constructed such that if any one of them is true, the other two must be false. This is how modern religion is set up. For each member of the Big Three, there is at least one statement of belief that differentiates that religion from the other two. If we examine the rules we set up for such exclusive statements we see that there is no restriction on all of the statements being false. As there are logically only four possibilities among three religions, with each of those religions believing that the other religions' key statements are false, there should be at least a 25% chance of all of those religions being wrong and no one having the right answer. Personally, I think the odds are much greater than that.

So, while I think established religion is all wet, I have nothing that says there's nothing out there. Still, I suspect that these surveyed Americans would anathematize me just as much as they would the atheists. After all, I choose not to participate in their mythology and superstition, and I prefer questioning and healthy doubt over blind, uninformed belief.

There is some disagreement over what constitutes an atheist and what does not. Let's get into the particulars.

From The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition:

a·the·ism
n.
1. Disbelief in or denial of the existence of God or gods.
2. The doctrine that there is no God or gods.

Let's first address the use of the word disbelief. In this case, a disbelief in the existence of God is logically equivalent to a belief in the nonexistence of God (since existence is a binary quality; a thing exists or it does not, Schrödinger's cat notwithstanding). That is why I call atheism a system of belief. It is a firm position on the existence of God. Every other word in the above definition is much firmer: doctrine, denial. Atheism is not a religion, of course, but it is a type of faith, namely a belief in the absence of proof. (And one would infer from the University of Minnesota study that Americans were reacting to the atheists defined under part 2 of that definition.)

Imagine the flipping of a fair coin. If you state that you do not believe that the coin came up heads, you are stating that you believe it came up tails. There is no other option. However, if you argue that you cannot know either way (let's say you're blind and aren't allowed to touch the coin), you have demonstrated agnosticism.

While tons of "proofs" exist for and against the existence of God, each of them has a logical fault that can be analyzed. Some remain compelling, but none is particularly rigorous or cogent.

As for agnosticism, our definition follows:

ag·nos·ti·cism
n.
1. The doctrine that certainty about first principles or absolute truth is unattainable and that only perceptual phenomena are objects of exact knowledge.
2. The belief that there can be no proof either that God exists or that God does not exist.

To me, agnosticism is the more reasonable approach to religion, since first principles cannot be known. All laws of physics break down at the point we think the universe began. But what happened before that? And why did it happen? It could be the result of chance or an infinite dance of creation and destruction that has no creator. We simply don't know and can't know.

The simple matter of the scale of the universe causes me to reject the anthropomorphic God idea. If the choice were only between the God described to us in religious scripture and nothing at all, I'd have to choose nothing, which would make me an atheist. However, I do not believe that those are the only choices. The concept of God is, I believe, broad enough for us to call almost anything God, even if it is some ideal concept of consciousness of which we are imperfect derivatives.

I think agnosticism is the scientific choice when it comes to religion. A goal of science is also to recognize the limits of knowledge. In mathematics, for instance, the only science in which proof is even possible, Kurt Gödel proved that true propositions can exist that cannot be proved within the logical framework of the system. In other words, all the unsolved problems and unproven conjectures in mathematics have a sense of mystery about them, since it is no longer guaranteed that a proof is possible. But those propositions can be very true nonetheless.

I think the first problem when considering God is that he or it remains undefined, despite what you might hear from the clergy. When it comes to the specific religious interpretation of God we choose, we run into some real trouble. As most people's faiths are determined by the faiths of their parents, it seems arbitrary and too geographically predetermined to be a worthwhile choice to make.

There are things we can't explain, and in those cases I believe the best thing to do is conclude that we can't explain them yet and work harder to explain them in the future. Some things, though, in Gödel's parlance, will remain "formally undecidable."

The Secret Spark, Part 2

Let’s examine the issue of the emergence of life more formally for a moment. Let me begin with a claim: Life is a binary quality. In other words, it is either on or off, 1 or 0. Life is digital. The only other option is that life is analog, moving in a continuous progression up from nothingness to a point where we recognize it as life.

Let me obviate the discussion of where that point might be by demonstrating that the cases are equivalent. First we have to start with an assumption. Let’s call it an axiom.

Life exists.

Too obvious? Without accepting this statement at the outset, we put ourselves in a difficult position. We may not know the best way to define life, but we should at least agree that there is a difference between what is alive and what is not alive. That difference is the quality we’ll define as life, and we will assume that we can tell the difference between something that is alive and something that is not. Even this assumption has its trappings, but we have to draw the line somewhere.

Now let’s consider a continuous function f that describes a thing’s degree of being alive at time t in the interval [0,1], with 0 representing something that is not alive and 1 representing something that is totally alive, whatever that may mean to us. We’ll say, for instance, that a rock has a value of 0 and a human being has a value of 1. Organic compounds changing and developing into future life will make the transition from 0 to 1, however slowly.

Now let’s define a delta function, similar in spirit to the Kronecker delta. We’ll define it as follows:

δ(t) = 0 if f(t) = 0; 1 if f(t) ≠ 0

The significance of this delta function is that it tells us when a thing has risen above the axis that forms the border between the nonliving and the living. It therefore states that the degree to which something is alive is unimportant as long as it is nonzero. This delta function therefore reduces any evaluation of life to a binary representation, which was to be demonstrated.

Now let’s examine this function for a nascent life form over an arbitrary interval of time, let’s say between t = 1 and t = 5: δ(1) = 0; δ(2) = 0; δ(3) = 0; δ(4) = 1; δ(5) = 1. We notice the change of state between t = 3 and t = 4. We therefore partition the interval t = [3,4] into regular subintervals and reevaluate. The most practical algorithm is a decimal approach, dividing the interval into ten equal subintervals, thus adding one decimal place of precision to the result.

Let’s say we find a change of state between t = 3.4 and t = 3.5. We would then subdivide that interval into ten more parts and continue the analysis. The goal is not to find the precise time the change occurred, but rather to get a precise result for the width of the interval in which it occurred.

What we’ll find if we follow this algorithm ad infinitum is the infinitesimal. In other words, the interval of time begins to resemble a mathematical point, and the emergence of life becomes like a line intersecting an axis at that point.

When dealing with time, there is a point at which it becomes meaningless. In physics, that interval is known as Planck time, equivalent to roughly 5.391 ×10^-44 seconds. The laws of physics don’t do much for us at intervals smaller than Planck time, and it corresponds to the time a photon takes to travel the Planck distance, which is the interval of length at which the quantized, digital nature of gravity becomes theoretically evident.

Perhaps we are indeed microcosms, little universes whose very existence and power of contemplation is a mystery on the order of the universe itself. But whatever we learn, and for whatever answers we find for every what and when and how, there will remain a why.

The Secret Spark in the Space Between

Life abounds on the earth today, but we all know that there was a time before it existed on this planet. You can therefore divide earth's lifetime into two parts, before and after life emerged. Imagine that you are zooming in on the timeline now. There must have been a day before life emerged and a day after. An hour before and an hour after. A second before and a second after. Whatever building blocks were developing over a great expanse of time in order to make life possible, the actual emergence of life was something that happened in an instant. If you imagine a film of life emerging, with billions of frames per second, you can imagine looking at new life, agreeing that it is alive, and then looking back, frame by frame, until you agree that it is not. On one of those frames, then, perhaps arbitrarily small, is an event of such magnificent importance that it is the essence of life itself. It is the spark that made organic compounds living compounds. It is not chemical. It is not electrical. It is something altogether different.

Think about it a little deeper. When life emerged on this planet, was it as a single event, highly improbable, that required all life after it to derive from it? Or did life emerge spontaneously and independently in many places on earth? And if it did, why do we not see any evidence of the spontaneous emergence of life on earth today? Is it possible that our planet, so hospitable to life's evolution and survival, is no longer hospitable to its emergence?

Every living thing on earth today is a derivative of something that came before it. We cannot manufacture life out of base components. We have to use the biological tools we've been given—in humanity's case, sperm and eggs—in order to reproduce life, to produce life again. We cannot mix a vat of organic compounds together and run a current through it and expect life to emerge. We are missing that quintessence, that spark. I'd like to know what it is.

To simply declare it a mystery is not satisfying to me. For this stuff of life is ubiquitous on this planet, making up the seen and unseen to the degree that it threatens itself by its own overabundance. We have tried to define life through its characteristics: organization, metabolism, growth, irritability, adaptation, and reproduction. But these are mere symptoms of life and not life itself.

Whatever it is, it seems to transcend matter, which is really mostly empty space, given the illusion of continuity by our useful, but inaccurate senses. On the smallest scale, well inside the atoms and quarks, the components of the living and the nonliving are the same. What, then, infused into those structures or the spaces between, makes all the difference?

For any one thing given the gift of life, the process eventually ends. A thing that is living eventually becomes a thing that was living, and the organized structure that once housed the mystery becomes but an artifact, seemingly incapable of holding the spark again. It should then perhaps be our goal to study the subtlety of death to better understand life. After all, perhaps the criterion that best determines whether something is alive is its ability to die.

And Iran, Iran So Far Away

This is a bit of a different post for me, since it comes from a reply I wrote on a bulletin board. Still, it represents something I had wanted to address anyway, so here it is.

I've been thinking about Iran a lot recently, and it is bothering the shit out of me. It didn't get a lot of press, but last August, Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, issued a fatwa that declared the production, stockpiling, and use of nuclear weapons un-Islamic and forbidden. In no uncertain language, he declared that Iran will never seek these weapons.

Now, it is tempting to doubt everything coming from anywhere within the "axis of evil," but I don't think Iran would make its main religious authority look like an asshole by turning around and developing nukes anyway. "Behold our un-Islamic nukes!" doesn't seem like the type of chant that the Iranian throngs are likely to throw around. It doesn't have the ring of the current favorite, "Death to America!"

Also, is there any strategic purpose for an Iranian nuclear weapons program? No. If Israel so much as smells a nuke cooking in Iran, it will not hesitate to light that whole area up with the nukes everyone knows it has (between 100 and 200 warheads, according to what I've read). Iran knows this. Iran also knows that it can't play chicken with the major nuclear powers, since it knows that we can turn that whole region into a glowing parking lot whenever we want.

So it worries me when I see reports in the Washington Post that suggest that the Bush administration might even be considering the tactical use of nuclear weapons to take out underground facilities in Iran. I tell you, nothing quite warms up a region's opinion of you better than poisoning part of it with radioactive residue. I'm also sure that the Russians and Chinese would appreciate our lighting off a few nukes in their neck of the woods.

There haven't been westerns made in many years that feature heroes in white hats and villains in black hats. World politics also doesn't work like that anymore. Not everything the United States does is good, and not everything our enemies do is bad. So while it is tempting to believe that everything out of the mouth of an Iranian official will be a lie, maybe we need to accept the idea that it is occasionally the truth. Iran swears it is not working on a weapons program. Why not try believing them? If we find out anything to the contrary, the entire world will turn against them, and they will look like schmucks. Try another unilateral assault based on shady evidence, though, perhaps nuking a sovereign country in the process, and the joke's on us. We become the terrorists.

With that, I step down from my soapbox.

Well, almost.

To date, North Korea is the only country to publicly (and vociferously) announce the development of nuclear weapons in response to U.S. aggression. They even pulled out of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (which Iran has signed) in 2003. North Korean propaganda is like anti-U.S. porn (see left). So why the hell aren't we talking about North Korea? Is it possibly because the Koreans don't prostrate themselves before Allah five times a day? Hey, I'm plenty concerned with how closely associated Islam seems to be with international terrorism, but are we really that much more comfortable in a new cold war with some godless communists than we are with an Islamic system of government?

Recapturing the Flame

Inspiration is a mysterious thing. Actually, it may not be, but I’ve declared it as such because I can’t seem to control it. Whatever it is, it lights on us at some of the strangest times, and the energy it provides transcends anything we’d know as simple alertness.

In a way, I was inspired to write about how uninspired I’ve felt recently. This blog, for instance, is only missing rolling tumbleweeds to accurately portray the level of neglect it’s experienced, and my new—and fabulously expensive—music-production software sits on my home computer without its capabilities having yet been adequately tested. Sure, I’ve had ideas, musical and otherwise, but I haven’t found the energy—or inspiration—needed to develop them, or in some cases even get them off the ground.

I guess it’s not quite the same as actual writer’s block, since I have recorded and written some ideas in the past few months, and I recently came up with a few ideas for some fiction (a long-neglected medium for me) that I think are pretty good on the surface. Perhaps it is more accurate to describe what I am experiencing as developer’s block. In particular, I am finding it difficult these days to accurately translate the sounds and textures in my head to concrete timbres in the real world. It’s no longer a matter of rendering a melody—that’s long been easy for me—but something altogether different, something specialized, for lack of a better word.

In my life I have been used to things happening quickly. I was always a fast learner, and I usually saw immediate progress when I worked on things. Of course, these days, I have gotten to a point where I am skilled enough in several fields to no longer see major strides when I work, and it is more and more difficult to objectively measure progress and development. In many ways, I guess I have been hoping for a new direction so I can emerge from frustration and once again experience the self-satisfied rush of progress.

In other words, I have become stuck in a mire of toil, an uncomfortable place where even minor progress takes great effort and a satisfactory product might be the result of months of enduring self-doubt. Everything I have read about some of the great artists in history—and I am not so naïve as to include myself among them—indicates that this is part of the process. I am left to take heart in the thought that because I keep working on it and because I still love the idea of it I am perhaps doing what I am supposed to be doing.

This sapping of inspiration and zeal seems to be retroactive as well. Depending on the day and whatever mood I might be in, I’ll either greet my previous artistic efforts with welcoming ears or ashamed criticism. As a result, I have essentially ignored several recent requests for recordings of my music, and I have deactivated the website I maintained that had housed some samples of my compositions from a couple of years ago. The music that I recorded in the past usually came about pretty quickly and was often finished within a day of the first germ of an idea sprouting in my head. As a result, I think that a certain freshness was palpable in some of those tracks, but I began to feel that I had shortchanged the development of those tunes, and I wound up hearing more of what I didn’t like than what I liked when I listened to them. At best, I heard potential in the pieces, but not realization. I was left with the thought: I’m better than this.

I have become, then, a composer without a portfolio, a musician who has been working for years who has nothing he is willing to play for anyone. In some ways, it reminds me of the stories I have read about Beethoven’s repudiation of his early work. I also find some comfort in the amount of effort he poured into making some of his greatest compositions seem effortless. It is then perhaps no coincidence that, despite my love of the other masters, Beethoven has always spoken to me the most.

I realized this morning that, whether it is a symptom or cause of my current artistic stagnancy, I have not been listening to music for pleasure recently. It occurred to me that inspiration is more than an idea sprouting from the ether (though it can manifest this way); it is maybe a subtle processing of the things we experience that move us in more ordinary times. Certainly you have been inspired by a piece of music you have heard, a painting you have admired, a poem or story you read, a film you saw, or even the sight of the sunlight dancing just so on the mountains in the distance.

The key seems to be that experience is the fuel of inspiration. I am perhaps stuck these days because my experience has been so routine recently. So while it is perhaps good advice to suggest steadfastly writing through one’s writer’s block, it is perhaps better advice to suggest simply living a little. The flame of inspiration will light again once given room to breathe.