When thinking about God/Religion/Spirituality “truth,” isn’t important

Recently, I posted this on my Facebook page:

“Does God exist?” is a bad question.

“Do people who believe in God behave better or worse than those who don’t?” is a far more useful question, isn’t it?

This was a relatively shallow take on a much deeper article I’d read a few days earlier. Very quickly, my friends started poking and prodding at it in the comments, which made me realize that I wasn’t going to get away with a shallow take, and I would have to dive deeper to support the point I wanted to make (which was basically my take-away from the article).

The article itself is a bit heavy for me; I don’t have the appropriate Liberal Arts background, and I was unfamiliar with many of the terms used there (hermeneutics, intersubjectivity). But, I think I got the overall gist of the argument, which I’m reproducing here. (Knowledgeable people, if you find places where I’m mistaken, please post corrections in the comments below.)

I see this as a rationalist atheist’s guide to thinking about God/Religion/Spirituality. The basic idea, I think, is this:

Let us assume that science is right and the universe is fully driven by the principles of science, and with enough knowledge of all the universal laws and enough computation power, we could predict the results of all actions and behaviors. However, we don’t know all the universal laws, and even if we did, we certainly don’t, and will not have enough computational power to do the computations.

Human beings are very complex. And human societies are even more complex. In the absence of our ability to perfectly model either of those, what kinds of rules of behavior should a “scientific” or “rational” person formulate? Specifically, if we formulate certain rules of behavior for a person in society, can we predict the effect of those rules across long time-frames—over generations? (Spoiler: No, we can’t.)

Let’s approach this from a different angle.

There’s a survival-of-the-fittest evolution happening at tribal/societal level. Tribes/groups/societies that have certain beliefs and hence follow certain rules of behavior survive and thrive, and those that follow other rules die out. This process has all the key characteristics required for evolution: natural selection, genetic drift, mutation and gene migration due to genetic admixture. Repeat this over long-enough time frames, and you can start thinking along these lines:

Old traditions that have survived long enough have important properties that are key to survival of the society as it exists today

This is true, even if you, as a rationalist thinker do not see the connection. Because, the connection is beyond your computation capabilities.

We can follow up that thought with this one:

Beliefs drive behavior. So, traditional beliefs, even if they’re objectively untrue, even if they’re provably false, have value in terms of the behaviors (rules) they’re driving, which can have important properties that are key to survival of the society as it exists today.

And thus, we reach

If a belief has survived in various different societies for thousands of years, it has value (in as much as it results in society as it exists today), even if the belief is provably false

Does this mean that we should uncritically accept all traditional beliefs and rules? Certainly not. There are things wrong with society as it exists today, which are driven by traditional beliefs and rules. But, these problems cannot be fixed by purely rational thought processes, because purely rational thought processes are not powerful enough to even model the problems, forget fix them.

There are lots of things wrong with lots of traditional beliefs. Also, many of them were responses to situations and problems that just don’t exist today because of modern science, medicine and technology. But I want us to acknowledge that there is a lot right with many of them in ways that are not obvious, and we need to re-view them with this new lens. For example, this thought process has helped me better appreciate the reason for homeopathy’s existence.

Anyway, here’s the original article that inspired this thought process. Good food for thought, if nothing else.

Westernized Treatment for Depression vs Rwanda

Found this little gem on my newsfeed today.

A person in Rwanda, talking to a western writer, Andrew Solomon, about his experience with western mental health and depression, had this to say:

“We had a lot of trouble with western mental health workers who came here immediately after the genocide and we had to ask some of them to leave.

They came and their practice did not involve being outside in the sun where you begin to feel better. There was no music or drumming to get your blood flowing again. There was no sense that everyone had taken the day off so that the entire community could come together to try to lift you up and bring you back to joy. There was no acknowledgement of the depression as something invasive and external that could actually be cast out again.

Instead they would take people one at a time into these dingy little rooms and have them sit around for an hour or so and talk about bad things that had happened to them. We had to ask them to leave.”

The second paragraph, especially the last line, was slightly mind-blowing, for me.

The full podcast is here.

Love

What is love?

Not an easy question to answer. But it does get asked often. I asked this question on my Facebook page and got a bunch of really interesting responses. Worth checking out.

In response I decided to list down a bunch of random quotes related to love.

I want to start with this:

Love is like
a pineapple,
sweet and
undefinable.

  • A grook by Piet Hein

Some people think that is silly, but I like it nevertheless.

But I did find one definition that is concise, but seems to capture a lot of the most important characteristics of love:

Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.

  • Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

This definition rather works for me. Not perfect, but covers a lot of cases, when you really think about it.

I’m not talking about the infatuation that people feel when the first fall in love. Here one of my Facebook status update from a few months ago:

People talk of “falling in love” as if it is a disease they catch. That’s not love, that’s infatuation. And that’s temporary – goes away in an year or two. If love could be described as a “falling in”, how can you promise to love someone forever, if the act did not involve any judgment or a decision on your part? Love is something you have to choose to do intentionally, and commit to doing against all adversities.

  • Adapted from Erich Fromm’s The Art of Loving, and a forgettable 1990s movies called Boomerang.

While you’re on this topic, this brainpickings article on why friendship is a greater gift than romantic love is a must read.

and related:

Love is blind; friendship closes its eyes.

  • Friedrich Nietzsche

Anyway, I’ll close out this random post with a bunch of random quotes/poems related to love:

I cannot bear to put away the bamboo sleeping mat.
The night I brought you home, I watched you roll it out.

  • Yuan Chen, 8th Century Chinese poet, talking about love

We accept the love we think we deserve.

― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

I do not crave nirvana.
I feel the embrace of freedom in a thousand bonds of delight.
[…]
No, I will never shut the doors of my senses […]
Yes, all my illusions will burn into illumination of joy,
and all my desires ripen into fruits of love.

  • Rabindranath Tagore in the Gitanjali

Kisses are a better fate than wisdom.

-e.e. cummings

Ghalib points out that it’s not all happiness and roses in love:

Phir hue hain gawaah-e-ishq talab
Ashkbaari ka hukm jaari hai

translation:

Again the witnesses of love have been summoned
An order to shed tears has been passed

  • Ghalib

Love is the word used to label the sexual excitement of the young, the habituation of the middle-aged, and the mutual dependence of the old.

  • John Ciardi

“Love is blind” …. “Not true. Otherwise lingerie wouldn’t be so popular”

  • Not sure where I stole this from.

A dad talking about ‘Dad Jokes’: “I think at some level my kids know that each time they groan or say ‘oh dad!’ to my admittedly pathetic dad jokes, they’re really saying ‘I love you too'”

invisible joy
drenches my soul
I love you Absolut

Adapted from here

She who responds to “What do you want for your birthday” with “If you really loved me, you would know what I want” is going to get a Playstation 3.

Stolen from here