Friday, November 16, 2018
Would the Discovery of Extraterrestrial Life Clash with God-Belief?
A friend of mine commented that if the space object Oumuamua now whizzing through our solar system were proven to be a probe from a civilization in another star system as had at one point been speculated, that discovery could be the impetus for humanity to unite in world peace-- "Or else" (sic).
I don't think that such unity would happen even if the object had been proven to be sent from another world. Here's why. If life, especially more intelligent forms than we humans, in fact exists on other planets, this would (rightfully) cast widespread doubt on theism's view of man as the highest form of life, ("created in God's image") and perhaps cast doubt on the very existence of a supreme being itself as well. However, ultra-religious God-believers might then become ultra-defensive and resistant to these findings to the point of claiming that they are a conspiracy against the very core of their beliefs and doctrines. This desperation in turn may cause them to riot and wreak havoc throughout the civilized world.
Maybe that sounds far fetched, but consider this: When world peace and the brotherhood of man were first idealized after WWII, the major obstacles to such harmony were political and economic in nature, e.g. the struggle between the communist and the non communist countries (basically East vs. West). At that time, religious extremism which now exists on an almost global scale was not even a blip on the radar, let alone the force that has since expanded into a source of hatred and disunity within and among various nations of the world.
Well, the cold war ended, but due to religion-based intolerance, world peace and unification are more elusive than ever. A confirmation of extraterrestrial life may indeed be necessary for humanity to start considering the implications for our future and for the meaning of life itself as we've come to understand it, inasmuch as our illusion that we are the sole inhabitants in the universe would be shattered.
And as for the actual likelihood itself of life on other worlds,. consider that astronomers had long predicted existence of other solar systems before that theory was finally confirmed in the 1990's when the first exoplanet was discovered. Since then, thousands more have been detected, and and as telescopes continue to improve beyond what was once thought to be their performance limit only a few decades ago, still thousands more such worlds will likely be found. So the stage for the actual discovery of life beyond Earth has been set.
But as long as god-belief remains a dominant force in so many parts of the world, then proof of extraterrestrial life alone will likely not be sufficient for man to achieve a positive reordering of our existential priorities. And as one of the many prospective ''or else'' deterrents to our advancement, the hindrance of theism may well be a daunting barrier against the realization of the significance of finding life beyond Earth and of its potential to write the next chapter in the story of humankind.
Wednesday, August 29, 2018
Why "God" Is Irrelevant to Our Understanding of the Universe
An argument for the existence of God is that life on Earth--and matter itself--could not possibly have come into being unless the universe were structured just right.This belief is based on the "Goldilocks'' or fine-tuned universe proposition. In addition, Earth had to be just the right distance from the sun which itself had to have certain properties, as does the solar system itself as a whole. Further, our planet itself once created had to develop in a certain way for life come into existence and flourish. And without the the hand of God that made all these pieces of the puzzle fall into place, none of us would be here today.
However, consider this: If there were an all-powerful supreme being, he could have made the laws of the universe come out any which way he wanted for matter and life to exist. So with that in mind, the universe in which we live and the set of rules by which it operates are just one of the infinite number of possibilities of the way that he could have caused his creation to turn out. And what makes us humans think we're so special anyway? Maybe there are other strains of life elsewhere in the universe that are unimaginably different from Earth's carbon based creatures. As Star Trek's Spock would say to Captain Kirk, ''It's life, Jim, but not as we know it.''
But we do know that there are likely millions of planets just in our own which itself is just one of countless worlds. Who knows how many of them may host life? Even if only a minuscule percentage do, some of them may be home to sentient beings. Come to think of it, there are many forms of life right here in our own world that exist in extremely ''un-Earth-like'' conditions.. Two random examples are bacteria living in the gastric acid of our gut, and sea life creatures at the bottom of the Mariana Trench which has a thousand times the atmospheric pressure bearing down on it than (and hence pushing outward from their innards) than at sea level.
Alternatively, deists believe that a supreme being created the universe and then it left alone to unfold on its own. Now if one maintains that there is God but that the universe had to develop the way it did for life to have come into existence, then how can God be considered all powerful--or perhaps the universe and God are one and the same in which case, so are deism and pantheism.
Speaking of deism, an organization called the the World Union of Deists, sees the creation of the universe as the'' Word of God'' and hence a miracle but supposedly not in the biblical sense but rather as ''This Deistic idea of a miracle, one in which a miracle is an act of The Supreme Intelligence/God, is based on reason and not on faith."
The universe is an amazing place all right, and since there's no scientific evidence for the existence of a supreme being within the framework of natural law, offering a "God'', deistic or otherwise as an explanation for the the complexity of the cosmos just muddies the waters. Occam's razor states that the simplest explanation of a phenomena is usually the correct one. In this case, that would eliminate a God from the equation. The simplest explanation in this case is that our universe with its own set of laws may be part of a multiverse in which other such universes have their own ''Goldilocks'' physical laws. In that case, then isn't it possible that a supreme being could have created the multiverse as well? Not really. If there's no evidence of that our own universe was created by a supreme being, why would other universes be any different?
Then of course there are those who say that there has to be a supreme being because the Big Bang couldn't have caused itself or just come out of nowhere (actually the latter may have been possible. See A universe From Nothing by Lawrence Krauss.) Yet that leads to the question, if God created the universe / multiverse, then who created God? Believers will always fall back on First Cause and that God is eternal. But that's not an answer. it's a paradox that can only be resolved with a self-creating supreme being, which makes even less sense. And to muck things up even further it's debatable that time even existed before the Big Bang.
However, there is a future for the universe, and it's not pretty. Over the next several trillion to the almost nth power years, the universe will either continue to expand, and eventually the stars will die out, the galaxies will come undone and the cosmos will become a cold, dead entity, or on the other hand if gravity prevails, the universe will collapse back in on itself in a Big Crunch. In either case, of course life will cease to exist. That leads to the question: why would an eternal supreme being create a universe with a ''use by'' date in the first place?*
Finally, the day well may come when humans make contact with beings from other worlds who are superior to our kind. The day may also come when biological sciences can create life in a test tube, and from there human beings (we're already part way there with rudimentary cloning) and other forms of life as yet undreamed of. What will humanity's relationship with these beings, both those that are extraterrestrial and those that we have artificially created? And What will be the response of those who claim that the ''hand (or word) of God'' is the only source of life--when man has also become an originator of living beings? And if human-created life evolves separately from mankind, will its descendants in some distant future speculate on how their own seemingly anthropic universe came into being just as we do today in ours?
*See also ''The Universe Is Disappearing, And There’s Nothing We Can Do To Stop It" and ''How Will the Universe End? | Space Time'', two excellent articles that I discovered after I published this post.
However, consider this: If there were an all-powerful supreme being, he could have made the laws of the universe come out any which way he wanted for matter and life to exist. So with that in mind, the universe in which we live and the set of rules by which it operates are just one of the infinite number of possibilities of the way that he could have caused his creation to turn out. And what makes us humans think we're so special anyway? Maybe there are other strains of life elsewhere in the universe that are unimaginably different from Earth's carbon based creatures. As Star Trek's Spock would say to Captain Kirk, ''It's life, Jim, but not as we know it.''
But we do know that there are likely millions of planets just in our own which itself is just one of countless worlds. Who knows how many of them may host life? Even if only a minuscule percentage do, some of them may be home to sentient beings. Come to think of it, there are many forms of life right here in our own world that exist in extremely ''un-Earth-like'' conditions.. Two random examples are bacteria living in the gastric acid of our gut, and sea life creatures at the bottom of the Mariana Trench which has a thousand times the atmospheric pressure bearing down on it than (and hence pushing outward from their innards) than at sea level.
Alternatively, deists believe that a supreme being created the universe and then it left alone to unfold on its own. Now if one maintains that there is God but that the universe had to develop the way it did for life to have come into existence, then how can God be considered all powerful--or perhaps the universe and God are one and the same in which case, so are deism and pantheism.
Speaking of deism, an organization called the the World Union of Deists, sees the creation of the universe as the'' Word of God'' and hence a miracle but supposedly not in the biblical sense but rather as ''This Deistic idea of a miracle, one in which a miracle is an act of The Supreme Intelligence/God, is based on reason and not on faith."
The universe is an amazing place all right, and since there's no scientific evidence for the existence of a supreme being within the framework of natural law, offering a "God'', deistic or otherwise as an explanation for the the complexity of the cosmos just muddies the waters. Occam's razor states that the simplest explanation of a phenomena is usually the correct one. In this case, that would eliminate a God from the equation. The simplest explanation in this case is that our universe with its own set of laws may be part of a multiverse in which other such universes have their own ''Goldilocks'' physical laws. In that case, then isn't it possible that a supreme being could have created the multiverse as well? Not really. If there's no evidence of that our own universe was created by a supreme being, why would other universes be any different?
Then of course there are those who say that there has to be a supreme being because the Big Bang couldn't have caused itself or just come out of nowhere (actually the latter may have been possible. See A universe From Nothing by Lawrence Krauss.) Yet that leads to the question, if God created the universe / multiverse, then who created God? Believers will always fall back on First Cause and that God is eternal. But that's not an answer. it's a paradox that can only be resolved with a self-creating supreme being, which makes even less sense. And to muck things up even further it's debatable that time even existed before the Big Bang.
However, there is a future for the universe, and it's not pretty. Over the next several trillion to the almost nth power years, the universe will either continue to expand, and eventually the stars will die out, the galaxies will come undone and the cosmos will become a cold, dead entity, or on the other hand if gravity prevails, the universe will collapse back in on itself in a Big Crunch. In either case, of course life will cease to exist. That leads to the question: why would an eternal supreme being create a universe with a ''use by'' date in the first place?*
Finally, the day well may come when humans make contact with beings from other worlds who are superior to our kind. The day may also come when biological sciences can create life in a test tube, and from there human beings (we're already part way there with rudimentary cloning) and other forms of life as yet undreamed of. What will humanity's relationship with these beings, both those that are extraterrestrial and those that we have artificially created? And What will be the response of those who claim that the ''hand (or word) of God'' is the only source of life--when man has also become an originator of living beings? And if human-created life evolves separately from mankind, will its descendants in some distant future speculate on how their own seemingly anthropic universe came into being just as we do today in ours?
*See also ''The Universe Is Disappearing, And There’s Nothing We Can Do To Stop It" and ''How Will the Universe End? | Space Time'', two excellent articles that I discovered after I published this post.
Monday, July 16, 2018
Her Bias Is Showing
As per the title of this blog site, my posts are usually oriented towards matters regarding the U.S.and Judaism. However, I'm taking a side trip here to review an opinion column from a newspaper in the Philippines, as the topic is a problem that Americans face as well .
As a supporter of gender equality , I find it disturbing when feminists hijack issues that affect both women and men and in doing so, paint women as almost exclusive sufferers of such concerns as though males who experience the same hardships don't exist.
An example is Columnist Rina Jimenez-David of the "Philippine Daily Inquirer" who resorts to this distortion to try to justify her perspective about the status of woman as victim. In her June 20 Opinion piece ''Standing without permission'' which discusses the Philippone government crackdown against loiterers (known in the Philippines as tambays, (which is Tagalog term adapted from the English phrase ''stand by''), she said that this action is anti--woman just because a relatively few number of people caught up in the controversial police sweep of suspected loiterers were female prostitutes. But in fact the overwhelming majority of those arrested as tambays were men.
Then in her July 03 column ''Gender factor in suicide'' Jimenez-David relates the phenomenon of the worldwide increase in suicides among young women ages 15-19. However, the source that she references, the World Health Organization, also reports that the global suicide rate for teens overall is rising. Presumably that includes males as well. But Jimenez-David focuses only the greater percentage of adolescent and young adult females who take their own lives as though that statistic makes them more ''victim-worthy'' than their male counterparts. Yet, why must the tragedy rightfully associated with suicide be framed according to gender? Let's say for the sake of argument that the suicide rate is 3 females for every 1 male. Just because fewer males die this way, does that mean that males who killed themselves are worth only 1/3 of the consideration that their female counterparts are entitled to receive?
And consider that perhaps the rate of suicide for young males is less because ''big boys don't cry''. Almost universally, males by their very sex are expected to just suck up their pain and get over it, ''and (they are told) anyway suicide is for the ''weak'''' . But of course they can't get over it. Instead they may redirect their psychological suffering outward in forms of violence against others. That in itself may be a partial explanation for the high crime rate among adolescent and young adult males. But that's just speculation on my part. However, "Philippine Star'' columnist Boo Chanco has some interesting thoughts about, ''Depression and suicide'' along with machismo, especially as how they are regarded in the Philippines.
But if we follow Jimenez-David's preference of focusing on afflictions based on gender, then shouldn't, say, alcoholism be treated as a male disease since overall, especially in countries like the Philippines, the percentage of men who are alcoholics is greater than that of women? Of course not. To the extent that this scourge negatively impacts society in general and individuals and families in particular, again not just in the Philippines but in many other parts of the world as well, it's everyone's problem.
The same is true for suicide. Accordingly then, it's pointless and one-sided for Jimenez-David to play the gender card whether it's regarding social injustice or social calamity in order to satisfy her personal agenda.
As a supporter of gender equality , I find it disturbing when feminists hijack issues that affect both women and men and in doing so, paint women as almost exclusive sufferers of such concerns as though males who experience the same hardships don't exist.
An example is Columnist Rina Jimenez-David of the "Philippine Daily Inquirer" who resorts to this distortion to try to justify her perspective about the status of woman as victim. In her June 20 Opinion piece ''Standing without permission'' which discusses the Philippone government crackdown against loiterers (known in the Philippines as tambays, (which is Tagalog term adapted from the English phrase ''stand by''), she said that this action is anti--woman just because a relatively few number of people caught up in the controversial police sweep of suspected loiterers were female prostitutes. But in fact the overwhelming majority of those arrested as tambays were men.
Then in her July 03 column ''Gender factor in suicide'' Jimenez-David relates the phenomenon of the worldwide increase in suicides among young women ages 15-19. However, the source that she references, the World Health Organization, also reports that the global suicide rate for teens overall is rising. Presumably that includes males as well. But Jimenez-David focuses only the greater percentage of adolescent and young adult females who take their own lives as though that statistic makes them more ''victim-worthy'' than their male counterparts. Yet, why must the tragedy rightfully associated with suicide be framed according to gender? Let's say for the sake of argument that the suicide rate is 3 females for every 1 male. Just because fewer males die this way, does that mean that males who killed themselves are worth only 1/3 of the consideration that their female counterparts are entitled to receive?
And consider that perhaps the rate of suicide for young males is less because ''big boys don't cry''. Almost universally, males by their very sex are expected to just suck up their pain and get over it, ''and (they are told) anyway suicide is for the ''weak'''' . But of course they can't get over it. Instead they may redirect their psychological suffering outward in forms of violence against others. That in itself may be a partial explanation for the high crime rate among adolescent and young adult males. But that's just speculation on my part. However, "Philippine Star'' columnist Boo Chanco has some interesting thoughts about, ''Depression and suicide'' along with machismo, especially as how they are regarded in the Philippines.
But if we follow Jimenez-David's preference of focusing on afflictions based on gender, then shouldn't, say, alcoholism be treated as a male disease since overall, especially in countries like the Philippines, the percentage of men who are alcoholics is greater than that of women? Of course not. To the extent that this scourge negatively impacts society in general and individuals and families in particular, again not just in the Philippines but in many other parts of the world as well, it's everyone's problem.
The same is true for suicide. Accordingly then, it's pointless and one-sided for Jimenez-David to play the gender card whether it's regarding social injustice or social calamity in order to satisfy her personal agenda.
Thursday, March 29, 2018
Atheism and Gratitude
Also I didn't receive the memo that says I can't feel gratitude towards the people, most of all to my wife Lydia, who have been there for me on the journey to my present stage of life.
Still another perspective to my particular sense of gratitude is an awareness of that for all my problems, my situation could be a lot worse.
I also have a strong appreciation and sense of awe for the grandeur of the natural world which is awesome for its beauty and web of interconnectedness that ranges from smallest the sub-atomic particle to the greatest supercluster of galaxies in the universe.
So I have a many things in my life for which I am grateful, and a realization that such good fortune should not be taken for granted. That may be the most important awareness about gratitude of all .
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