Wednesday 16 May 2007

Pic of the day: Life is also a different domain from matter, even though it exists within and is composed of matter. You cannot apply the laws from one in another. When I was very little, I thought that perhaps small stones would one day become large stones and have new small stones of their own. This kind of superstition is what happens when you don't understand the nature of domains and the domains of nature.

Religion as domain

Robert Godwin ("One Cosmos under God") has a point when he repeatedly tries to explain that religion must be understood on a different plane from science. It is not so much that they are contradictory but rather that they exist in different dimensions, of which there are many. Let us look at a couple more of these dimensions, planes or domains to make it a bit more clear.

Let us take the domain of art or beauty. Let us say you have bought a pretty lamp, and you mention this to a friend, not aware that he is actually an abeautyist.
"So this so-called pretty lamp, does it use less electricity than an ugly lamp?"
"No, it is probably the same."
"Does it take up less room, perhaps?"
"No, it has nothing to do with that. It just looks better."
"So it gives more light, then?"
"No, that's not it. It doesn't make you see better, it looks better."
"Lamps can't look. You need eyes to look. You are anthropomorphizing furniture and need help before the furniture talks to you and tells you to kill someone."
"I mean looks better in the way that it is more pleasing to look at. I feel good looking at it."
"But your feeling good looking at furniture is clearly a problem with your head, not with the furniture."
"Actually it is not a problem at all, quite the opposite."
"Well, it should be, since you are seeing things that aren't there."

In short, if you already have decided that beauty does not exist, you are going to win every debate against the poor schmucks who believe in it. But you are also going to do seriously bad trying to manufacture lamps, chairs, and pretty much anything in a house except computers for a purely male target audience.

Or take quantum physics. These so-called equations, incredibly dense and complex formulas which can supposedly only be fully understood by a few geniuses in each generation, they tell us that every part of our body consists of particles that also happen to be waves smeared out over a poorly defined area – in theory all of the universe, although the probability of being anywhere far away is infinitely small – and these particles can tunnel through things and appear instantly on the other side. Despite this elaborate theory, you never see these geniuses of quantum physics tunnel out of their laboratories and spontaneously appear in locked rooms.

But even though beauty and quantum physics can easily be reduced to absurdity (a time-honored way of revealing logical fallacies), they still persist and have predictive power within their own domain. Actually there is a lot of seeming absurdity in the world. During the so-called Enlightenment (historical epoch), the learned men made fun of the absurd notion that stones could fall down from on high, as described by Jewish and Muslim scripture. Perhaps there were mountains above the clouds? These early scientists were greatly amused... until stones fell down from on high.

And of course there is my favorite absurdity: The placebo effect. The effect of medication does not depend only on the chemicals in it, but also of the patient knowing. But not only that: Even if the patient does not know what's in the pill, it still makes a difference that his doctor knows, even if he never tells. In order to test whether a new pill is more or less effective than another, it is necessary for both the patient and the doctor to be in the dark about which is which, a so-called double-blind test. And of course you cannot reveal it to anyone else that has direct contact with the patient either, such as family members. Supposedly it is the acetylsalicylic acid that reduces the pain and inflammation, not the knowledge of the acetylsalicylic acid, but evidently the effect is indeed "smeared out" and depends on observation, much like the absurd quantum phenomena.

A word of warning came some months ago from a study of heart patients being prayed for. The patients were divided into three groups that got equal care before, during and after surgery. One group was prayed for by volunteers who had no personal connection to them, but were not told about it. One was prayed for and told so. One group was left alone as a control group. The result? There was no significant difference between the control group and those tacitly prayed for. But those who knew they were prayed for, were significantly more likely to die. The experiment has not been repeated.

Perhaps it is just as well if people don't meddle in domains where they don't belong.

It should have been needless to say, but the same holds true the other way. History shows us the danger of clerics getting power, not to mention weapons: From the Assyrians through the Aztecs, the Inquisition and to modern-day Taliban, the bloodshed knows no bounds. This follows naturally from the fundamental difference between the two domains: The perfect and the imperfect, absolutes vs compromises, the eternal against the ever changing. Theocracy can never rest until the last human is dead, because no one qualifies, no one lives up to the Absolute. Except briefly oneself, it seems, as long as one can make human sacrifices to substitute for the only sacrifice ever demanded by true Religion: Our own illusion of independence. When the last priest is alone on the planet, he will see the error of his ways and pierce his own heart. But of course, long before that it won't matter, since the women were all exterminated a while ago. They generally don't even try to strive for perfection, but rather for completeness, something a male priest cannot and should not understand.

I am certainly not saying that religion and the material world should not be mixed. In a manner of speaking they would both be meaningless without each other (at least with a wide definition of religion). But you cannot apply the tools of one domain to another. Each must be understood within its own rules. When you move between them, you essentially enter a different dimension where different laws of nature hold sway. You cannot simply bring something with you from one to the other, but whatever you bring across needs to go through a transformation. This includes yourself. All true religion is transformative. If my religion does not change me, then it is either misunderstood or false. But this is a thing that I should talk about to those it concerns, not everyone. What everyone needs to know is that there are different domains and the soul can move between them, but only if it accepts each anew, as if it were newborn into a different universe and had to learn the very laws of nature over again.