Agnostic Universe

Bravo Neil deGrasse Tyson! I wholeheartedly agree with your analysis and views on being atheist or agnostic.

I’m a weak atheist and strong agnostic. A weak atheist is a person lacking in a theistic belief. A strong atheist would be akin to an anti-theist and a belief that it is proven that there are no gods or a creator of this universe. I’m a strong agnostic and believe that we don’t know about anything supernatural since we are natural and possibly aren’t capable of knowing the true origin and nature of the universe we live in. I assert that even if the big bang is provable that it is an incomplete view of the origin of this universe because it is from within this universe after the event occurred. I don’t believe we are intelligent enough to figure out what may or may not be outside this universe from our vantage point and that we may never know what truly happened in the first moment of existence.

If someone asks me about my religious beliefs then I view my weak atheism as the lesser trait and my strong agnosticism as the dominant trait since I value knowledge over belief. A label of me as the atheist unbeliever just doesn’t adequately describe me. I prefer the label of the unknowing agnostic and I would assert that it best describes us all. I believe agnosticism should be shared as a universal truth. It makes more sense to speak to god believers in terms of what they don’t really know instead of the simply contrary view of “I don’t believe you and you shouldn’t believe it either”. Agnosticism is more of a philosophical methodology that can be used to frame your beliefs and examine the supernatural instead of just using atheism as a lack of belief. What is the rejection of belief based on other than to say the burden of proof is on the believer? I see my weak atheism about defined religions as a result of my active use of agnosticism. Some people trace their movement to freethought as moving from not knowing (agnostic) to not believing (atheist) as two different beliefs. I first thought of myself as an atheist because I stopped believing and after further reflection decided agnosticism was the reason for my rejection of the defined religions.

Here is where we get into the main difference between myself and the typical atheist and where the atheists accuse me of heresy to “their belief”. I have the agnostic nuance of saying that even though all of the defined religions I know about appear to be fiction when critically examined, I do not fully reject the possibility of a creator or gods we don’t know about. Theists jump on that statement and think they can convince me of their nonsense, but I think even if there were a creator or gods then we’re unable to understand such a thing and it or they have no dealings with us as far as I can tell. If there is a god and it cares about me then let it interact with me directly instead of through my fellow humans. None of you can be trusted to give me the correct truth about something so important and bigger than our insignificant existence. I’m still waiting for the gods to speak to me directly but I’m smart enough to not hold my breath in anticipation.

The main point of this post is to say that I’ve given creation itself some more thought lately and I’ve come up with a possible god hypothesis to support my reason for not being a complete anti-theist. I have to consider the possibilities of an infinite physical universe, multiverses, the big bang of this universe, string theory, m-theory, the theory of everything, etc. I’m just an average person and read a little here and there about these things but I think there’s enough there for a basic god hypothesis that I’ll call the Rube Goldberg Machine for Creation of this Universe.

If infinity, mulitiverses, origin theory, etc. is capable of randomly creating our one specific universe as a subset of all of existence with the right conditions to evolve the human intellect, then the infinity, mulitiverses, origin theory, etc. could have been capable of randomly creating an intelligent being capable of creating our one specific universe as a subset of all of existence.

So I think that if there were an intelligent creator of this universe then it was just something that arose within the entirety of existence and only created our one universe and wasn’t the cause of all of existence itself. This creator wouldn’t be all-powerful and all-knowing and would just have to be powerful and intelligent enough to create RNA, DNA, etc. and code macromolecules for life. I don’t believe that such a being is necessary to create us and Occam’s razor suggests the extra step of an intelligent designer for our universe is an unnecessary addition of complexity. This is why I call the hypothesis the Rube Goldberg Machine for Creation because it throws in an extra creation step just to make it more interesting. However, if you’re being intellectually honest and believe that we could arise from randomness and think and create what we are able to create then a singular being or beings that could intentionally or unintentionally create the building blocks of our life could also be a possibility. I still firmly believe that we don’t know and are generally clueless about the true origins of our universe. I still believe it’s all a big mystery and I choose to remain firmly agnostic.

Check out this article on Apple causes ‘religious’ reaction in brains of fans, say neuroscientists

Some atheists say religion is a nonsense that people should stop. I agree that the religions are confusing, inconsistent, and obviously false in my opinion. Some people get some good out of them and some get some very bad out of them. But even if these religions died off like the old mythologies of the Egyptians, Norse, or Greek it seems to me that people are neurologically wired to believe in “something”. Looking at this article about the Apple brand it’s not surprising that some people react the same way to a product like the iPhone as they do to Jesus. An iPhone can help you and give you some comfort and enjoyment in reality but some people extrapolate those feelings into something bigger and false. I think we do take something as simple as a thing or idea and mentally and emotionally blow it up into something it isn’t and it’s just our mind playing tricks on us in a way we may not completely control. I tend to be more literal minded so just as I had no problem moving from an iPhone to an Android phone I have no problem with moving away from the Jesus of my childhood to the honest truth of being an unknowing agnostic. (Yes, the dogmatic atheist steps in and says that since I lack theism I should call myself atheist instead… more on that later but I’ll remind folks that I am a weak atheist and strong agnostic on the scales of belief and knowledge)

And then there’s these videos I recommend concerning the origin of religion in the human brain. This explains to me why religion keeps going despite the obviously fallacy of them to those of us that don’t believe in any of them. These are from The Neurological Origins Of Religious Belief on Big Think if you want to read the accompanying article.

The Brain Creates Religion

Humans and Myth-making

The article concludes with:

If religiosity operates in specific parts and chemicals of the brain, then its origins might be written in the blueprints of life, our genes. To this point, research by geneticist Dean Hamer at the NIH finds God in a single gene–Vesicular Monoamine transporter 2 (VMAT2). Hamer identifies this as the “God gene,” a leading gene among many others written into our genetic code that predisposes people to religiosity. A genetic origin point of religiosity might stem from an evolutionary drive toward inclusion. In this way, learning a society’s religion, like learning its language, is hard-wired into humans through inherited genes.

I think it helps to understand the mechanics of religious belief in navigating a world that has an awful lot of it. It doesn’t prove the truthfulness of the belief in any sense, but it is important to know that when we talk about our beliefs or non-beliefs and the beliefs held by others you may not be able to do anything about what everyone else believes since there is something fundamentally neurological and possibly even genetic in their faith.

Considering that fact, have I replaced my own religious belief with agnosticism and my belief that we are just simple beings that really don’t know? Have the hardcore atheists that claim they haven’t adopted a dogma or faith in an absolute non-belief in gods or creation actually replaced their religious inclinations with atheism? Some atheists have argued with me over the definitions of atheism and agnosticism and have attacked the notion of agnosticism as flawed and useless. I sometimes wonder if they actual do have a dogmatic belief in atheism that includes as a part of the unwritten doctrine that atheistic doctrine should be denied as dogma. I’m just one person believing what I believe but it does appear to be dogma when some atheists tell me I shouldn’t call myself agnostic and that basically I’m not “doing atheism correctly” in the same way they attack theists for believing in their religions. Perhaps they’re just similarly wired to a belief and a faith even if it’s a faith that there definitely are no gods or creation. (Yes, the dogmatic atheist steps in and points out they have a lack of belief and a lack of faith and they’re certain of all of this because of their belief that there definitely is no proof for the truth of religions including those we haven’t invented or discovered yet)

I love the Symphony of Science auto-tune songs. Here’s a new one featuring Hawking, Sagan, Dawkins, Shears, and Tyson. It’s about the Big Bang and is great imagery with wonderful music and dialog turned into singing.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then how many words is a video worth? I like finding well made videos about nonbelief since they serve as wonderful examples and tools for communicating what I believe. Here are two recent finds I enjoyed that I want to share.

Coffee with Bernie is a good dialog describing the nontheist point of view. Watching the back and forth between belief and nonbelief is more compelling than just presenting one view or the other by itself.

So now that you’ve heard arguments against belief in gods, now what? This next video is a good one with the honest dialog, beautiful pictures of the universe, and the music at the end. Science Saved My Soul is something that I personally find emotionally moving. It’s an agnostic religious experience. The jealous god of the Bible dreamed up by our primitive ancestors is pathetic in comparison to the majesty of the universe itself.

Excellent excerpts from Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space. More specifically, from the chapter titled A Universe Not Made For Us.

I’ve come across this great video demonstration of the evolution of the eye that explains how the current eye could have evolved from simple light sensors.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/01/1/l_011_01.html

The video is the best part of the PBS posting but it is accompanied by the following text:

When evolution skeptics want to attack Darwin’s theory, they often point to the human eye. How could something so complex, they argue, have developed through random mutations and natural selection, even over millions of years?

If evolution occurs through gradations, the critics say, how could it have created the separate parts of the eye — the lens, the retina, the pupil, and so forth — since none of these structures by themselves would make vision possible? In other words, what good is five percent of an eye?

Darwin acknowledged from the start that the eye would be a difficult case for his new theory to explain. Difficult, but not impossible. Scientists have come up with scenarios through which the first eye-like structure, a light-sensitive pigmented spot on the skin, could have gone through changes and complexities to form the human eye, with its many parts and astounding abilities.

Through natural selection, different types of eyes have emerged in evolutionary history — and the human eye isn’t even the best one, from some standpoints. Because blood vessels run across the surface of the retina instead of beneath it, it’s easy for the vessels to proliferate or leak and impair vision. So, the evolution theorists say, the anti-evolution argument that life was created by an “intelligent designer” doesn’t hold water: If God or some other omnipotent force was responsible for the human eye, it was something of a botched design.

Biologists use the range of less complex light sensitive structures that exist in living species today to hypothesize the various evolutionary stages eyes may have gone through.

Here’s how some scientists think some eyes may have evolved: The simple light-sensitive spot on the skin of some ancestral creature gave it some tiny survival advantage, perhaps allowing it to evade a predator. Random changes then created a depression in the light-sensitive patch, a deepening pit that made “vision” a little sharper. At the same time, the pit’s opening gradually narrowed, so light entered through a small aperture, like a pinhole camera.

Every change had to confer a survival advantage, no matter how slight. Eventually, the light-sensitive spot evolved into a retina, the layer of cells and pigment at the back of the human eye. Over time a lens formed at the front of the eye. It could have arisen as a double-layered transparent tissue containing increasing amounts of liquid that gave it the convex curvature of the human eye.

In fact, eyes corresponding to every stage in this sequence have been found in existing living species. The existence of this range of less complex light-sensitive structures supports scientists’ hypotheses about how complex eyes like ours could evolve. The first animals with anything resembling an eye lived about 550 million years ago. And, according to one scientist’s calculations, only 364,000 years would have been needed for a camera-like eye to evolve from a light-sensitive patch.

I will close my browsing of the online excerpts of Shattering the Sacred Myths – Evolutionary Metaphysics by Robert Stewart with the following excerpt:

There is nothing to be gained by promoting religious myths over scientific knowledge, or by throwing away centuries of social progress to return to outdated and oppressive ideas of right and wrong. Yet there is everything to be gained by presenting the best of our scientific and moral knowledge in such a convincing way that it unites the entire world community behind a common sense of purpose.

Conservatives can do their best to resist it, and relativist skeptics can try to deny it, but as our technology continues to improve, as our knowledge and experience grows, and as our collective understanding becomes increasingly refined, eventually a single coherent worldview will emerge that is as near to the truth as possible, and it will be something that every clear-minded rational thinker can easily agree with.

The most admirable work of modern thinkers, writers, and filmmakers is to describe our situation here on earth as clearly and accurately as possible, using words that are simple enough for everybody to understand, while at the same time encouraging cooperation between both individuals and nations, to improve our chances of surviving through this period of rapid technological and social change.

Metaphysics of Evolution – Modern Materialism

Yes, hopefully scientific truths can win out over religious myths in the future and humanity will grow closer together as a united community. I very much believe that Agnosticism, and the honest acknowledgment of all that we do not know about our origins (and may never know) is an essential key to that future.

Socrates wanted people to think about what they believed rather than just blindly accepting whatever was passed down to them by tradition or told to them by figures of authority.

He said that the secret to being wise was to realize that we really do not know much. Everybody wants to think that what they believe is right, and they cling to the beliefs that they are familiar with, even when they do not fully understand the issues. It takes a great deal of humility to admit the limits of your knowledge.

He taught that by asking the right questions, and then subjecting the answers to further examination, agreement could eventually be reached about the highest standards for human thought and behavior. He was notorious for stopping people in the street and questioning what they believed.

Socrates was eventually accused by the conservative establishment of undermining people’s belief in the traditional gods of the city, and thereby corrupting the morals of the young. By a slim majority, a jury of 500 citizens condemned him to death.

Metaphysics of Evolution – Ancient Greek Philosophy

Continuing my read through the online excerpts from Metaphysics of Evolution I found the above excerpt on Socrates. I think I need to read more about his beliefs since he definitely sounds like an Agnostic since he equates wisdom with acknowledgement of what we don’t know. This section of the book touches on the history of Greek and Roman religion and philosophy and the rise of Christianity.

The Advancing Technology chapter excerpt from Metaphysics of Evolution that I’m reading through starts out with such subjects as Artificial Intelligence and Genetic Engineering. They are very thought-provoking concerning what can be duplicated in life by us mere mortals without any divine powers of creation.

However, the excerpt I want to point out is a good summary of arguments for or against the existence of God. This is a very well written explanation of why I call myself Agnostic instead of Atheist.

The only point I differ on is the first paragraph because I understand it both ways. I agree with that point but I also agree with the point that if God is a part of “existence” then if God could exist without a creator then the Universe itself could also exist without a creator. God would require as much of an intelligent designer as some think the Universe does.

Some people ask, ?If God created the universe, then who created God?? This question presumes that the laws of logic that define the possibilities of this universe must also apply to any higher dimension beyond space and time, but there is no reason to believe that any of our concepts or understandings need to apply beyond this universe.

Most religions claim to know something about God’s attributes, but then each religion disagrees with the other. And so we can safely assume that unless they have indisputable evidence, then anyone who claims to know any of God’s attributes is probably misguided.

We interpret the world according to our beliefs. When a person’s beliefs are misguided, then the way that their mind perceives the world will be different from how the world really is. Misguided religious beliefs can cause their believers to perceive only a fantasy world full of mythical delusions.

The irrational claims and unbelievable myths preached by the traditional religions, their refusal to accept established scientific truths, and a growing dissatisfaction with traditional religious morality are just a few of the reasons why many educated people today reject the notion of God.

For thousands of years, religious myths may have been useful for promoting social justice and preserving community and family values, but now they seem to be posing a serious threat to the peace and prosperity of the modern world as they continue to be used by some opportunists to preach bigotry and oppression, provoke wars, and inspire terrorism.

If God does exist, then nothing can be known about God, other than that God is some unknown process behind the design and existence of the universe.

And if events in this universe are unfolding towards some kind of purposeful outcome according to some mysterious cosmic plan, then the only way for us to discover anything about this plan is to search for patterns in the unfolding of history.

Metaphysics of Evolution – Advancing Technology

Bottom line: We are ignorant about the true nature of the Universe and do not know if a creator concept is applicable or not.