The Existence of God

I am almost entirely convinced that god does not exist. Almost. I am an atheist and have been for a year, so this may seem a belated statement to some...

But god was not a part of my decision to break from Catholicism, and by extension - religion. I thought quite a bit about the matter once I became old enough to seriously consider it. After years of casual pondering, a short while before my confirmation, I came to the conclusion that 1.) I don't 'believe' in god (i.e. I have no faith in him, no trust), and 2.) the metaphysical existence of god was beyond my comprehension and concern. But I believed in morality, right and wrong; so despite my abandonment of the concept of 'god', I still wanted religion.

I went through my confirmation with every intention of treating religion like a philosophy with lots of fairy tales. It was my job to sort through Catholicism and pull out the morals from the fairy tales, to find the essence of what is good. Religion was my ethics. I turned to science for everything else; the scientific method was epistemology, which was used to discover the metaphysics of the universe. That was about as sophisticated as I got at age 16 and I was happy with it. I wasn't entirely satisfied with my catholic ethics, but was content to settle down and unravel the whole thing.

The more I read the more critical I became of certain religious doctrines. But it wasn't until I read Ayn Rand that I questioned the innate goodness of religion, and by that time the only thing holding up my faith in religious ethics was my own rationalizations. These I promptly discarded after an emotional and somewhat dramatic experience, which I won't go into.

I have hesitated to call myself atheist, except out of expedience, because I still did not have any opinion or concern over the existence of god. After an argument with a friend about the nature of atheism (which I generally considered to be a form of idiocy) I decided to revisit 'god' and figure out the second part of the mystery.

The problem with this is the definition of god. There are two fundamentally differing ideas of what god actually is. First was the pagans, to them gods were metaphysical facts; literally super-humans. They existed in the same way the stars exist; obvious, but still incomprehensible to the technologically deficient humans.

Then there was a revolution and many pagan gods became one True God (Plato style). Many historians consider this revolution in terms of the number of god (i.e. gods vs. God, plural vs. singular). I think this misses the very key change in the definition of what god is. Suddenly god became something not of this world, literally super-natural, above or beyond the natural universe. Nowadays, god isn't described as something that humans don't understand, it is something humans can't understand. Any modern priest will balk when you ask him to point to god, because you can't point to god. God literally doesn't exist as we know existence; he is of a 'higher' existence.

Well, it's obvious that the latter 'god' doesn't exist; it is built into his definition. There is no other plane, realm, or universe; higher or otherwise. The universe is everything that exists. Everything. If you define god as not a part of the universe; as something that you can't, by its very nature, identify then it doesn't exist.

And that's all very well and good, but what if you define god as something that is in the universe, that does exist, that you can point to and identify and say "yep, that right there is god alright" as the pagans did. Then he could exist and we simply haven't yet devised a way to find him.

Now 'could' does not mean 'does', it means 'could'. That's what makes the former so easy to deal with and the latter so hard. With the former god, by definition, does not exist, but the latter is too open-ended for my comfort.

The only thing that I see resolving the issue is the idea that what exists must be proven to exist. In other words, (and I hate to divert a philosophical discussion towards the imaginary, but it demonstrates the point) just because one can't actually prove that pink unicorns don't exist doesn't mean that they do. The old cliché, "just because you can't see it doesn't mean it isn't there" is wrong and misleading. We can't see air, but we can detect it; I haven't ever seen a million dollars at once, but I could; I have never seen nor detected god in any manner, but could I? That begs, how would I? I don't know. My gut reaction is to say that it's impossible and therefore god can't exist. But how it is impossible, I can't say.

Any ideas, I'm kind of stumped.

Librarians

Librarians are masterminds at devising inane, tedious tasks. They may even surpass kindergarten teachers in the matter.

I work for librarians and today I spent an hour paper-clipping long blue strips of paper to square white pieces of paper in a certain specified manner. I also had to sort out a giant bag full of various paperclips, because it was absolutely necessary to use plastic triangular paperclips as opposed to any other kind of paperclip.

When asked by my supervisor, the librarian, to do this ridiculous thing, which she didn't have time for, I asked why such a thing must be done. To which she responded, "I don't know, my boss told me to do it."

...and you're a 40-something-year-old with masters degree who didn't bother to ask why such a thing is necessary.

I am shocked by the casual insanity of it all. This is only one of the many subtly strange, obviously meaningless tasks I've been asked to devout my time to. And whenever I point out some simple way of making the idiotic chore more efficient I am, without fail, lauded for my brilliant technical knowledge. It's like a cruel prank by renegade psychology majors.

North Koreans

Propaganda film backfires

"A North Korean propaganda film about the repatriation of a spy — Lee In-Mo — who had languished for years in a South Korean prison may have a short shelf life, according to defectors now living in the South. [...]

'What we could not believe in the movie was that Lee and others were conducting hunger strikes in the prison,' said one defector about the movie.

'Refusing to eat was a form of resistance in the South? Boy, South Korea must be a paradise. That's what we said among ourselves'

Lee received a hero's welcome and, sure enough, Pyongyang made a film on Lee's 'heroic struggle for the motherland' in South Korean prisons and made sure all North Koreans saw it.

However, the movie caused many North Koreans to become curious about South Korean society.

Many North Korean defectors said their first reaction upon seeing the film was to ask how people could stay in prison for more than 10 years and remain alive? They say few people survive even three years in North Korean political prisons. Being fed three regular meals a day is utterly unimaginable.

Political prisoners die from disease and malnutrition, if not from torture, as documented by Kang Chul-Won in his best-selling book, 'Aquariums of Pyongyang,' which recently led him to be invited by President Bush to the White House.

The North Korean defectors said the movie had the opposite effect from what was intended. One wondered if Pyongyang is still showing the movie to the people.

'I bet they are not,' he said."

Well, that is a happy little irony. :-D

In Praise of Fireworks

Last night I watched Tempe's fireworks display over Tempe Town Lake from the top of the Languages and Lit. building at ASU. Since Sky Harbor Airport is on the very eastern edge of Phoenix and small Tempe is nestled right beside it, ASU is directly under the busiest flight path in Arizona. So, as I was marveling at the pyrotechnic display I couldn't help but notice the continual traffic of planes flying low over ASU and the lake just as it always does.

It is such a wonderfully arrogant display of control that we can set off precision explosions for our pure pleasure without even interfering with flight paths. I mean, imagine the complicated arrangement of color and light in explosion that is a firework. That, in itself takes masterful skill in exerting one's will over fire. Then consider that we have the ability to coordinate such a show by means of a computer. That, literally with the press of a button, one man can orchestrate a symphony of lights, incorporating whichever elements he designs.

And on top of all that, the show need not interfere with daily business unless one chooses it too. If you want to take the day off and sit with the kids at a lake to watch the show, then wonderful! Have a great time. But if you have to be at a business meeting in North Carolina in the morning, then the show doesn't have to interfere with your schedule, because we can control the fireworks to such a degree that we can remove the danger of shooting them off.

That is simply brilliant! It is a testament to our ability to shape our environment. An ability, which I am learning, that is preceded by freedom. Is it any wonder that fireworks are such an important part of our celebration of freedom.