"I think, therefore I am." -René Descartes

Today, I had an interesting discussion with two of my colleagues about the nature of science and religion.  One of my high school interns asked me if I believed in God, to which I replied, “No.”  As I began to state my reasons, my colleague began to challenge me when I mentioned, “All progress that man kind has made to this day is thanks to science.”  I admit, this statement was not well thought out, and deserved to be called out.  Religion was a necessary evolutionary trait that kept mankind together as a cohesive, social unit.  Where we began to truly reach a heated discussion was when I put forth the fact that religion is causing harm due to its fervent war against science.  There are numerous arguments in favor of this statement, with supporting evidence both globally and nationally.  I will point the reader to these sources, as I believe he is privileged to consume as much as he would or would not like: The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris and Denialism by Michael Spectre. These are books that I have read or am current reading.  I also recommend Richard Dawkin’s God Delusion.

I am, at my very core, a proponent of science.  I have always been, and I have recently had the immense pleasure of learning more about the essence of science in my latest reading of Keith Stanovich’s How To Think Straight About Psychology, a book that reminds the public that psychology is indeed a science by reminding people what science consists of and how true psychology fits this description exactly.  Additionally, it describes why the public views some sciences in an overly skeptical way, with a special focus on psychology due to the difficulties it faces in penetrating the public.

But anyways, I believe in the power of science and it’s utility to shed light on truths about the universe (a universe that includes ourselves).  And I believe in using this man-made process to further the well-being of humanity; I have no problem with you answering questions that science cannot answer -eg: essentialist questions such as “What is happiness? What does happiness truly mean? or Why do we need happiness?” You can answer these in any way you see fit as long as innocents do not have to suffer because of it.

My confusion and sorrow for religious people is their acceptance of two contradictory methods of thought: science, which consists of arriving at conclusions through evidence, and religion, which consists of arriving at conclusions without or even opposed to evidence.  My quarrel with these people is that they cause the deaths of millions due to their arguments and actions.  Millions of people die of starvation because our country’s people refuse to allow genetically modified foods to become a predominant food source because it treads on God’s turf.  People die because of pseudoscience faith remedies that replace medicinal cures.  People die and suffer because a blastocyst – composed of cells in the hundreds (as opposed to trillions in a grown human) – have souls and thus are more important than burn victims, amputees, and so many others that could benefit from stem cells.  This is injustice.  These are decisions without evidence.

Science provides answers and truths to questions that we could not answer before.  This scares people.  People cling to irrational beliefs and obstruct the path of progress with those beliefs.  We have answers, let us use them.

Multimedia Material/Sources:

Science can answer moral questions.

The danger of science denial.

Have a question? Please, ask me – it’s anonymous: http://www.lunathink.com/ask/

“The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.”

-Thomas Jefferson, third president of the United States of America

I had an interesting discussion with a friend of mine, Anthony, today. He began by trying to establish a debate around the existence of free will versus fate. He worded his initial argument as follows.

1. Stance One: Free will does not exist. Everything in the world is causal; every action is a result of chemical reactions in the body; he defines fate by this.
2. Stance Two: Free will exists. Namely, everything occurs from randomness. There is no causation — this stance is the antithesis of Stance One.

I challenged the very nature of this argument. I learned from Atlas Shrugged that checking or challenging premises and assumption is key to solid foundations and logic. I disagreed with the absolute nature of the argument, the limited scope, and the rigidity of black and white views forced onto a highly fluid topic. My belief is that both free-will and causation exist to allow the universe to function, so I attempted to pull the argument further out to a universe view at least. We ventured quite deeply into a multiverse discussion.

After we both defined our views of fate and free-will, the discussion deepened based on my initial statements:

1. First, essentially all of the universe functions in a cause-and-effect manner. Since the dawn of the universe, the laws inherent to our dimensions governed body interactions. Everything physical that we see today is a result of some interaction between particles which has occurred before, and follows as a logical conclusion. Our emotions are caused, biologically, by the different balances of hormones, neurotransmitters, and chemicals within our bodies. Our thoughts, actions, and personalities are all heavily influenced, shaped, and even entirely created by the cumulation of all of our life experiences. Everything is an effect of some cause, some stimulus from our environment. Each stimulus is, in turn, also an effect of some previous cause, and so on and so forth until the origin of the universe.
2. Second, the reason why my first statement says, “essentially all,” is because there are a few highly significant exceptions to this rule that are integral to humanity’s existence as it is now. The origin of the universe is said to begin with the Big Bang. Well, I further conjecture that the Big Bang was created due to one or more reactions between Virtual Particles due to Vacuum Fluctuations (also referred to as Vacuum Energies). Vacuum Fluctuations basically describe the phenomenon of energy, and even matter, spontaneously, randomly occurring in the presence of absolute nothingness. There seems to be no cause whatsoever to enact this initial effect.
   

   Big Bang, Conceptualization

   Additionally, we have yet to discover the biological base of consciousness. I believe the origins of this may have a very abstract origin, if any at all. I consider the seat of consciousness to be similar in inexplicable origins to Vacuum Fluctuations at this moment. This realm of intangible thought is held aloft from the law-bound tangible universe – in our minds, anything we can conceive of is possible, so is anything we have not conceived. I hold these causeless phenomena to be at the foundation of what I refer to as free will. Human choice is influenced, if not determined by outside forces, but the fact choice exists at all is an indication of free will, in my opinion.

The rest of our discussion centered around exploring the possible existence of two separate universes interacting with each other – the tangible and the intangible. Anthony speculates that one can view these interactions from two different perspectives, one as viewing the tangible world affecting the intangible (your environment and experiences affecting your thoughts and decisions) and the other as the intangible affecting the tangible words (your thoughts and ideas made into actions and objects). Furthermore, he believes these two perspectives formulate what may be a new interpretation of free will and fate for him – fate being oriented around the intangible affecting the tangible, and fate representing the opposing view point.

I personally believe the universe to function due to regular feedback between the two, originating with the intangible nothingness affecting the tangible universe. But again, who knows? The nothingness of the tangible world may have affected the intangible to cause its Vacuum Fluctuations in the first place. At this speculation, Anthony began to question whether we can truly know anything? I staunched this train of thought, as my faith is firm and foundational in this respect,

“I completely believe that human beings can know anything and everything. Regardless of our current or past comprehension, human beings will always find a way to acquire knowledge of our universe and others, should they exist. In this, I believe without logic, reason, or evidence. This stance is my faith. This ideal is my God.”

“Let the future tell the truth and evaluate each one according to his work and accomplishments. The present is theirs; the future, for which I really worked, is mine.”
-Nikola Tesla, Electrical and Mechanical Engineer and the inventor of modern day electricity

I was looking out at the Boston skyline, amongst the stone lion maws, and surrounded by the ornate columns and buttresses of MIT’s dome. I thought to myself, “This is all mine.”

The most beautiful aspect of this thought, is that everyone can share it. Everything you see before you… every building, every road, every car, every lamp post, every bridge… from the idea, to the designs, to the physical object itself … they were all created by people who existed before you did. They were all created by people who were experienced than you are. They were all created with the knowledge that the creator would reap the least benefits from his own creation.

He creates for all those that will come after him. These dorms were made for students to live in comfortably, fully. These institute halls were constructed almost a hundred years ago so that you could have the privilege to learn from the brightest minds in the world about some of the most esoteric and magical information that mankind has gathered and organized from the universe.

It is all for you. Anyone can become immortal by leaving their legacy to the next generation. A man who teaches a child is made immortal by that child’s memory. A man who invents a wheel is made immortal by the very existence of the wheel. Everything is made for you because you represent the entirety of our species’s struggle to survive for thousands of years – because you represent the culmination all of the knowledge and application of science, art, and industry – because you are the one whom the world must be passed down to, completely – because everyone trusts you to do the best you can with that responsibility.

Boston Skyline

I am constantly surprised by how short-sighted people can be when they get carried away in the pedantic details of life. In actuality, according to Carl Jung, a typical person does not gain the perspective of generativity – thinking beyond one’s current life and generation to the next generation of children – until middle-age, around 30 years old.

I believe this is an injustice to mankind. We have come to learn so much about psychology and the insurmountable potential of the young that we cannot afford to leave them to wander aimlessly and eventually stumble upon foresight. We should attempt to be more active in encouraging the emotional and mental blossoming of thought and action toward long distance goals and objectives. An expansion of thinking on this part tremendously boosts critical thinking skills, and paves a golden pathway to divergent thinking – a critical aspect of innovation.

So the next time you feel a bit rushed by the speed of every day life, you might want to try taking a breather to recognize that the world as it is today is yours for the taking, and you can grab your slice when you see fit. And that effects of true importance and magnitude lay on a timeline far longer and far deeper than the relative moments that you may be stressing about in the presence. Suddenly, you may find that what was worrying you before, doesn’t seem like such a big deal anymore. :)