What Makes You So Special?
It is almost irresistible for humans to believe we have some special relation to the universe and that humankind is not just the result of a chain of coincidences.
At the Cathedral of St John the Divine in New York City in 1995, Carl Sagan gave a speech about humankind’s place in the universe in relation to science and religion.
One of science’s alleged crimes is revealing that our favorite most reassuring stories about our place in the universe and how we came to be are delusional. Instead what science reveals is a universe much older and much vaster than the tidy anthropocentric proscenium of our ancestors.
We have found from modern astronomy that we live on a tiny hunk of rock and metal, third from the sun, that circles a humdrum star in the obscure outskirts of an ordinary galaxy which contains some 400 billion other stars, which is one of about a 100 billion other galaxies that make up the universe and according to some current views, a universe that is one among an immense number, perhaps an infinite number of other universes.
In this perspective the idea that our planet is at the center of the universe much less that human purpose is central to the existence of the universe is pathetic.
If you read this quote a face value, you’d realize that each individual human existence on the planet earth is not even a blip on the radar. Each human is a single entity on one of almost a trillion planets, located at a single point in time on an immense timeline.
Yet humans of various cultures believe a divine being personally takes an interest in their lives. Others believe the world will come to an end in their lifetime.
Why???
Why you? Why now? Consider the amount of known galaxies and the age of planet earth (even if believed to be 10,000 years old). Ask yourself again, what is the likelihood that God exists on this planet, or that the rapture is imminent, or that. The odds for any one person in existence to experience these scenarios are staggering.
An Open Question to Believers
Please explain to me and anyone else reading this: in the grand scheme of things, why do you believe that you time and place has been chosen for some cataclysmic event to happen? Please explain logically, without using Bible verses.
Carl Sagan was and is one my personal heroes. The traditional creation myths are completely unimaginative….it is hard to imagine other worlds circling other suns in other galaxies and universes (multiverse?) and that is why we cannot embrace our lack of centrality in the grand scheme of things.
But… perhaps…it could also be our arrogance…
Written by aravindh on May 21st, 2008Ahh, I didn’t want to use the ‘A’ word (meaning ‘arrogance’), as much as I wanted to use it, haha. But I do agree in being a little more humble when it comes to my place in this life…
Written by Ted Goas on May 21st, 2008What is interesting to me is that humans down through the ages have always believed, to some extend, that they were living at the end or near the end of days. When you point this out to people today who believe the same thing, the reply is always along the lines of, “Well, but THIS time we are right!” It is like the Jehovah’s Witnesses who continue to mistakenly predict the end of the world.
There is an older book that a friend of my keeps recommending but I have not read yet called “When Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psychological Study of A Modern Group that Predicted the Destruction of the World” (1956) by Leon Festinger, et all. Festinger and his colleagues infiltrated a UFO cult that believed that the end of the world was at hand and studied their reactions when the UFO failed to show up on the specified date and the world failed to end (apparently some of them became even MORE fervent despite the set back). This is the book in which he proposed his theory of “cognitive dissonance.”
Written by James Tracy on May 21st, 2008James, your first paragraph pretty much sums up my point. Nice jab at the Jehovah’s Witnesses; I mean how many times have they gotten the apocalypse date wrong? They might hold the record for number of false predictions.
That’s very interesting how Festinger monitored the reaction of believers when their prediction didn’t come true. I’d like to look more into that book. Thanks!
Written by Ted Goas on May 21st, 2008Hi Ted - I’m presuming that by “believers” you mean people who believe that their “time and place has been chosen for some cataclysmic event to happen” - so maybe I’m not the best person to answer this. But perhaps you are open to hearing from other people of faith… am I right to read this as an invitation to have a conversation?
Hoping so, I wade in…
To speak to your questions, “what makes you so special?” and “what is the likelihood that God exists on this planet” I’d like to say that for many (at least the Christians who I know well) God is not understood to be a big person or as I read one poster say the “Big Spook”. This may be some people’s experience - but it is not that of all theists or Christians. Rather God exceeds our power to understand, to name, to paint a picture of.
To quote an aptly unnamed 14th century Christian mystic in his or her book The Cloud of Unknowing, “Every single rational creature has two faculties: the power of knowledge and the power of love. God is always quite unable to be comprehended by the first faculty, that of intelligence, but he is totally and perfectly comprehensible by the second, the power of love.”
Reason, skepticism, doubt, logic, intelligence - all are perfectly and wonderfully compatible with God. (As a scientist I do hope this is so!) Many many people of faith are also people of great skepticism - I think I am one - in fact I offer that it is when we remove our own involvement with the data (blind ourselves to the outcome of experiments) we are acting with our greatest faith.
This, quite probably, makes no sense - hopefully I can explore it more coherently on my own blog in the future.
At any rate, I’m trying to suggest that what makes me - and you - and people (and worms and chickens and protoplasm) of history and future so special is maybe like that conversation from The Incredibles where it is suggested that if everyone has super powers then nobody is special. Well, you could look at it that way - or you could look at it that we’re all special. Either way I don’t think I’m MORE special than anyone else. If that helps.
Similarly, I imagine by this stage in my ramblings you’d see my answer to the question about the likelihood of God’s existence on this planet is that likelihoods don’t really enter into it. It’s not a relevant question. Rather the God permeates all this is - God is within this place and time, as well as all of those billions and billions of Sagan’s stars. It’s not an either/or but always and forever a Yes.
Written by fluorophore on May 26th, 2008Sorry, that line towards the end there has a typo, “Rather the God permeates all this is” should read, “Rather, God permeates all that is…”
if THAT makes any more sense
Written by fluorophore on May 26th, 2008Hi fluorophore, you read right as an invitation for conversation. You are always welcome here!
I do agree with you when you say “when we remove our own involvement with the data…we are acting with our greatest faith”. I bet we’re all guilty from that from time to time (myself included). I just try not to fall into this behavior when if comes to larger issues such as politics, religion, finances, etc.
I understand your point about people being on the same level, being if everyone is special or not special. But why is my question ultimately an irrelevant one? I enjoyed your comments, clear and logical. But in the last paragraph you stepped back and seemed to say “the question is irrelevant. God’s there and I just know it. And that’s that.”
How does anyone ‘just know’ that an omniscience, omnipotent God is there?
Written by Ted Goas on May 26th, 2008Thanks Ted, I was hoping I wasn’t intruding.
Well, nobody does know that an omniscient, omnipotent God is there. Of course not - hence “faith” rather than “knowledge” - I mean surely if there was such a provable thing, like inventing a microscope that finally allows us to see microbes - we wouldn’t be having this conversation. I don’t imagine there ever will come a time when we have a God-microscope, or when we’ve identified the God-quark or some such thing - I just don’t think it’s like that. I’d say that’s where God and Bigfoot differ (just guessing here since I know really nothing at all about Bigfoot - I’m going to go out on a limb here and take a wild guess that there might be a few other differences, too) in that I take it Bigfoot is said to be a real being whose just really hairy and camera-shy or something.
So my view is that God has no unique physical body, nor does God have a physical location - hence the irrelevance of the question “why here” because there is neither place nor time to God.
I also don’t know, but I guess that part of living as if the world is about to end is mostly about living in a way that isn’t attached to a tomorrow that we don’t know will come. I don’t know that I won’t be creamed by a Mac truck on my way to work tomorrow, I don’t know that my child won’t get cancer, I don’t know that I’ll wake up in the morning. We, as a culture, tend to live in denial of those unknowns, and I perceive that “End is near” messages are a counter to that - an effort to decrease our emotional attachment to our present lives. But I’m really just taking a wild guess - “rapture” and “apocalypse” are not part of my tradition and I’m not really a good person to speak to those.
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Anyway - I can see the atheist throwing up his or her hands and saying, “well this God thing is unprovable!” and you’re right - it is absolutely completely unprovable. That is, in some ways, I venture, the point. It’s certainly what the author of the Cloud of Unknowing was getting at, that we’re not speaking of an intellectual or logical experience - so even saying “I just know” is a failure of human language, and one that comes off as sort of smug and unhelpful. I hope I don’t sound like that - I’m not really that experienced at trying to express this stuff so please call me on it if I do come off that way.
I’d like to offer an analogy - due probably more to my failure of imagination and command of language than anything else - but maybe bear with me? If you love someone in your life - be they a cat or a hamster or, better, a human being (not sure if a sandwich would work in this analogy - but surely you’d use the word “love” to describe some experience you’ve had) - can you explain how you know you love that person?
Maybe we can describe good things about someone we love - probably we can also describe some unflattering things too - maybe we honestly feel that this person is the best person (or hamster) we’ve ever met, maybe they have the best qualities we’ve ever encountered - they are the most honest, most funny, most compassionate - whatever. But regardless of the nameable attributes, is there something else, something ineffable that sets them apart? Did you ever meet a good person who did nothing for you? Maybe you admired them but they didn’t float your boat? A date with zero chemistry, despite good looks, surface compatibilities?
And now, scientifically prove the difference.
Is it truly mappable? Can we really diagram why what moves us does in fact move us? Even if feelings of love get mapped on the brain, do we suppose that we’ll ever be able to convince ourselves to fall in love with someone?
I’m just trying to suggest that regardless of our experience with God, we might be able to agree that some questions are really unanswerable in any kind of logical absolute way. I’m not trying to dodge the question, I’m not trying to be smug like “nyah nyah nyah I’m in love and you’re not!” But I’m trying to say that sometimes “I don’t know, I can’t know - but I feel” is really the most honest answer we might have.
Written by fluorophore on May 26th, 2008fluorophore, I wish I met more theists like you. You come across as being very rational, not overstepping bounds while still having faith. I like what you said about “I don’t know, I can’t know - but I feel”. I guess atheists stop at the point where if they can’t know, that’s it; probably doesn’t exist. Conversely, some theists ‘feel’ enough to where a feeling can become real. But I like your take on it. I might come across as a gnostic atheist, but I’m an agnostic and don’t completely discount to possibility of a God. Thanks for your comments, great stuff!
Written by Ted Goas on May 27th, 2008Wow, thanks Ted! I’ll try not to go getting a fat head now.
I guess part of my motivation for speaking up is that it does seem like we have more in common than might appear. I get the feeling as I read here and at de-C (where I wandered here from, and only wandered there because I ran into that post on lacking the god gene, which fascinated me) that probably many (I can’t speak to “mosts”) theists also don’t believe in a lot of the things I see mentioned here and at de-C as things atheists or agnostics don’t believe in.
So often as a Christian I read something reactive or unkind or scary written by someone who puports to speak for all Christians and frankly it’s really painful for me. I too dislike the out of context biblical quotes, I am most certainly not a Creationist, nor a Biblical literalist - and I venture to say that I’m in good company. But we are perhaps quieter than we should be.
So I just wanted to try to clarify, where I can, some of what I see are misconceptions about what it’s like to live a religious life. It’s hard to be painted with the same brush - I’m sure that’s true of living as an agnostic as well. Maybe if we all start having these conversations we can better understand one another and give one another a little more of that precious freedom of (and from) religion.
Written by fluorophore on May 27th, 2008I will admit that it’s nice to see a rational conversation between a theist and an agnostic (leaning towards atheist). These conversations tend to stray from rational way too quickly.
My thoughts on the subject…
The statement about “I don’t know, I can’t know - but I feel” is a great statement, and one of the best I’ve heard on the theist side of the argument. The difference for myself, and many atheists and agnostics, is that while your statement definitely applies to the feeling of love to a person, place, animal, experience, etc., those things are tangible. I can touch, see, hear, smell and taste them. I can experience them over and over again, whether in person or in memory. I have actually experienced them. God, is completely beyond experience. You can experience mass, choir, prayer, confession, reading the Bible, but you are experiencing other people, places, things, etc. You are not ever actually experiencing God himself/herself/itself. Many atheists and agnostics have a hard time attaching a feeling to something they can never, ever experience.
In my personal belief, and yes I know this is just my own belief, but I find it to be much more rewarding, and a better use of my time, to spend energy experiencing things that are tangible.
Written by Andrew Smith on May 28th, 2008I too am a huge fan of Carl Sagan. My wife and I both love the parallel that is drawn in the story “Contact” I believe that he was being fare in admitting that no conclusions can be made about the origins or destination of human-kind without faith. It is a choice to include or exclude the spiritual or the physical. My theory is that the two are not mutually exclusive. I did not say, “I believe that the two are not mutually exclusive.” I would then be using a faith based vocabulary rather that a scientific community vocabulary. Many want to have this type of conversation on scientific “home court.”
I cannot refute “Big Bang” theory. I also cannot prove it. It’s a theory. A theory must have suspension of disbelief while it is proved out. If it is proved out, it becomes a fact. Until then we must have faith that science will provide a conclusion that does not include God.
Let us consider the genetic code’s complexity. This organization of amino acids is amazing enough. The fact that it adapts to a myriad of environments is inconceivable when referenced to any observable order outside of this island of life. It is not a force like that laws of physics, rather it is an organized structure. The order necessary to replicate and regenerate is more complicated than our greatest physics equations. I asked myself this when I saw the movie version of “Contact”; If we received a signal similar in complexity to the genetic code on a radio wave from space, would there be a question in our mind that a higher intelligence was involved? Because we have received this code in the form of something as familiar to us as our own bodies; the secular academic community has been able to evade the question that looms in the mind of many believers. How can something so amazing and complex just fall together in a pond of ooze? If rocks were stacked with this level of order and complexity, we would have to admit intelligent origination.
The answer, “It just happened” Falls radically short from a rational explanation. We are asked to have faith that science will respond to the questions without God in the answer.
Faith goes both ways.
Written by Jared Jobbins on July 31st, 2008