Ignorance is the Mother of all Religions

I am reminded of a story one of my professors in college told. The story was about the power of the imagination exhibited by a little girl at play. She and her parents were on their vacation and one night at a hotel and the little girl was craving something to do. Her father retrieved three matches from the book in the ashtray near the bed and told her to use her imagination. The little girl played with them for a little while reenacting the story of Hansel and Gretal. It was not long before the little girl screamed and started crying. When her father asked what was wrong she held up one of the matches and said the witch had frightened her and she didn't want to play with that match anymore.

It is remarkable what one's imagination can do, especially in children or those with limited capacity. I have seen how capacity can be limited by lack of education or simple ignorance even in myself. Take the human body for an example. For a long time people believed, and some still do, that the simplest act of human machination or operation is a miracle. It is ignorance of physiology that creates the miracle. The same goes for natural phenomena such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, hurricanes and lighting and sometimes they are still thought to be caused by a deity when we can explain these things through plate tectonics and the gravitational effects of the sun and moon on the earth's crust, patterns of oceanic currents of warm and cold water, and electro-static dishcharge caused by the friction of clouds. Take a plastic fork and rub it on your hair and let a slow thin stream of water come out of the faucet and hold the fork near the stream. The path of the water will bend towards the fork. Is that magic? Am I god for being able to move water without any visible explanation? Not too long ago I would have been.

It is well known that the Ancient Greeks revered their heroes and legends. In Greece we found something interesting. Elephant bones that were re-buried in the form of giant men. An elephant skeleton reformed in the shape of a man would give the impression of a giant with one eye socket where the elephants trunk would be. Could this be a Cyclops? In China, bones have been found of dinosaurs, could these be the Chinese dragon? In every good lie there is a hint of truth and sometimes the unexplained and mysterious are explained through myth. Paleontologists find dinosaurs, this does not mean that people a thousand years ago did not as well. It is not new science that we have today, it is just not as crowded with religious ignorance as it used to be. Consider the elephant/Cyclops when you read the Genesis account for the Nephalim, or Leviathan. Imagine what the imagination can do with fossils exposed by the elements of no living creature that is seen today and when found by ignorant shepherds and tribesman 5000 years ago! Now imagine the stories that could be spun through the centuries from these accounts to explain what, and sometimes why, they are there.

From the time we are children we have always asked questions. Why is the sky blue? Where did we come from? Religions have always attempted to answer these questions and usually through ignorance until they are faced with irrefutable proof. The world is flat, the Sun revolves around the Earth, and the Earth is the center of the Universe were all once believed to be universal truths in religion that were infallible. People were imprisoned for thinking otherwise. Every time science shoots a hole into ignorant religious beliefs the religious either deny it outright, make up excuses and in the case of apologists today they adapt the science to explain the religion. Infallibility is consistency with truth and only religion claims infallibility.

NEVER SURRENDER: THE LONELY WAR OF HIROO ONODA

His home was a dense area of rainforest and he lived on the wild coconuts that grew in abundance.

Hiroo Onoda: never surrender

His principal enemy was the army of mosquitoes that arrived with each new shower of rain. But for Hiroo Onoda there was another enemy - one that remained elusive.

Unaware that the Second World War had ended 29 years earlier, he was still fighting a lonely guerrilla war in the jungles of Lubang Island in the Philippines. His story is one of courage, farce and loyalty gone mad.

Lubang Island: news travelled slowly

Hiroo Onoda was born to be a soldier. He had enlisted in the Imperial Japanese Army at the age of 20, receiving training in intelligence and guerrilla warfare. In December, 1944, he and a small group of elite soldiers were sent to Lubang Island in the Philippines.

Their mission was to destroy the island’s little airstrip and port facilities. They were prohibited, under any circumstances, from surrendering, or committing suicide.

US landing at Leyte: beginning of the end for Japanese
occupation of Philippines

‘You are absolutely forbidden to die by your own hand…’ read Onoda’s military order. ‘So long as you have one soldier, you are to continue to lead him. You may have to live on coconuts. If that's the case, live on coconuts! Under no circumstances are you [to] give up your life voluntarily.’

Onoda was unable to destroy Lubang’s landing facilities, enabling US and Philippine forces to capture the island in February, 1945. Most of the Japanese soldiers were either imprisoned or killed. But Onoda and three others fled to the hills, from where they vowed to continue the fight.

Japanese soldiers in the Philippines

Lubang Island was small: 16 miles long and just six miles wide. Yet it was covered in dense forest and the four Japanese soldiers found it easy to remain in hiding. They spend their time conducting guerrilla activities, killing at least 30 Filipinos in one attack and clashing with the police on several other occasions.

In October, 1945, the men stumbled across a leaflet that read: ‘The war ended on August 15. Come down from the mountains.’ Onoda did not believe it: he was convinced it was Allied propaganda.

A couple of months later, the men found a second leaflet that had been dropped from the air. It was a surrender order issued by General Tomoyuki Yamashita, Commander of the Fourteenth Army.

Once again, Onoda and his men did not believe it to be genuine and vowed to continue Japanese resistance.

General Tomoyuki:
'You can surrender now.' 

Four long years passed and still the little band were living in he forest. But by now, one of the four - Yuichi Aktsu - had had enough. He abandoned his comrades, surrendered to the Filipino army and returned to Japan. He informed the army that three of his comrades still believed the war to be ongoing.

Another two years passed before family photographs and letters were finally dropped into the forest on Lubang Island. Onoda found the parcels but was convinced it was all part of an elaborate trick. He and his two companions remained determined to continue fighting until the bitter end.

They had little equipment and almost no provisions: they survived by eating coconuts and bananas and occasionally killing a cow. Their living conditions were abominable: there was the tropical heat, constant rain and infestations of rats. All the while they slept in makeshift huts made from branches.

Years rolled into decades and the men began to feel the effects of age. One of Onoda’s comrades was killed by local Filipinos in 1954: another lived for a further 18 years before being shot in October, 1972. He and Onoda had been engaged in a guerrilla raid on Lubang’s food supplies when they got caught in a shoot-out.

Onoda was now alone: the last Japanese soldier still fighting the Second World War, a conflict that had ended 27 years earlier.

By now his struggle had become a lonely one, yet he refused to lay down his arms. He was still conducting guerrilla raids in the spring of 1974, when a traveling Japanese student, Noria Suzuki, made contact with him.

Suzuki broke the news that the war had ended a long time previously.

Suzuki meets Onoda

Onoda refused to believe it. He told Suzuki he would never surrender until he received specific orders to that effect from his superior officer.

Only now did the Japanese government get involved in trying to bring Onoda’s war to an end. They managed to locate his previous commanding officer, Major Taniguchi, who was thankfully still alive.

The major was flown to Lubang Island in order to tell Onoda in person to lay down his weapons.

He was finally successful on 9 March, 1974. ‘Japan,’ he said to Onoda, ‘had lost the war and all combat activity was to cease immediately.’

If it's 1974, the war must be over. Onoda lays down
his weapons

Onoda was officially relived from military duties and told to hand over his rifle, ammunition and hand grenades. He was both stunned and horrified.

‘We really lost the war!’ were his first words. ‘How could they [the Japanese army] have been so sloppy?

When he returned to Japan, he was feted as a national hero. But Onoda disliked the attention and found Japan a mere shadow of the noble imperial country he had served for so many years.

Hiroo Onoda is alive to this day. Now 90 years of age, he remains grateful to Major Taniguchi for tracking him down in the Philippines.

The King who would be slapped

In Ancient Mesopotamia, the new year was rung in at a festival known as Akitu, which means “barley” in Sumerian. The festival was made up of two distinct festivals, each held at the beginning of the two half-years on the Sumerian calendar—one to celebrate sowing barley, and the other to celebrate cutting it.

Following the first new moon after the vernal equinox in late March, the Babylonians of ancient Mesopotamia would honor the rebirth of the natural world with a multi-day festival called Akitu. This early New Year’s celebration dates back to around 2000 B.C., and is believed to have been deeply intertwined with religion and mythology. During the Akitu, statues of the gods were paraded through the city streets, and rites were enacted to symbolize their victory over the forces of chaos. Through these rituals the Babylonians believed the world was symbolically cleansed and recreated by the gods in preparation for the new year and the return of spring.

One fascinating aspect of the Akitu involved a kind of ritual humiliation endured by the Babylonian king. This peculiar tradition saw the king brought before a statue of the god Marduk, stripped of his royal regalia and forced to swear that he had led the city with honor. A high priest would then slap the monarch and drag him by his ears in the hope of making him cry. If royal tears were shed, it was seen as a sign that Marduk was satisfied and had symbolically extended the king’s rule. Some historians have since argued that these political elements suggest the Akitu was used by the monarchy as a tool for reaffirming the king’s divine power over his people.

The festival started on the 21^st of Adar, running until the 1^st of Nisannu. The two most important places during the festival were the Temple of the supreme god Marduk (the Esagila), and the “House of the New Year” in the north of the city of Babylon. The primary gods of the festival were Marduk (of course) and Marduk’s son, Nabu.

The first three days of the festival weren’t filled with a whole lot of excitement—mostly prayers, pleading for the safety of the city and people, and confessing. On the fourth day, seemingly reassured by three days of sad prayers, folks got a little uppity, and the party began! The high priest would recite the Enuma Elish—the Babylonian creation epic—in preparation for the following day, sort of like many people’s modern traditions of watching White Christmas on Christmas Eve, or watching the ball drop in New York’s Times Square before midnight on New Year’s Eve.

On the fifth day, the King of Babylon was required to “submit” to Marduk—essentially, the King would enter the Esagila, be stripped of all his objects of power, and then got slapped across the face by the high priest.  And while slapping kings isn’t generally recommended for folks who plan on staying, well, alive, in this case the high priest was acting as a vessel of the god Marduk, forcing the King to remain humble and reflect on his blessings. In fact, the slap had to be hard enough to draw tears, and the more tears? The better!

While we don’t understand all the rituals that went on afterward, historians know that the sixth day and following saw a parade of sorts, perhaps several. The gods arrived in boats and traveled to the temples—that is, gold statuettes of the gods were carried and paraded around as the King made his rounds—and battles were recited and acted out with these statues. At the end of the seventh day, the procession was supposed to end up at the House of the New Year, amidst plenty of rousing songs and dances from the populace (no “Aud Lang Syne” at this party!).

Days eight through ten get a little shady in terms of historical knowledge of what happened, but perhaps that should be expected—when you’ve been celebrating for seven days beforehand, there’s bound to be a little forgetfulness at the bottom of one’s tankard of ale, if you catch my meaning.

We do know that on the eleventh day (or twelfth, depending on the source), the gods—ie. statues—boarded their boats to sail away for another year. And presumably everyone else went home and took a long nap.

Married With Children

Married With Children (1987-1997) in many ways resembles a similar sitcom framework to All in the Family. The show works very hard to use comedy to expose the shocking reality of poverty and dispel television’s myth of happy families, but in the process it reproduces very normalized scripts of femininity and masculinity. Brunson and Caughie argue that the image of femininity that is depicted by Married With Children represents a male view of women’s experience.  This is likely largely due to the writers of the show recognizing that Married With Children had managed to capture the attention of male television viewers, something that became less and less common as the sitcom evolved. 

This clip sets up the characters as they will remain for the rest of the series. Peggy is a lazy housewife. Al is a hardworking shoe salesman. Bud is the smart one, and Kelly is a tramp.

The show was created as one of the early shows for the emerging FOX network. FOX was invented in an attempt to capture the MTV generation and wasn’t afraid to push, even cross the boundaries of acceptable morality.  FOX was also extremely interested in capturing the demographic of young, black television viewers, and Married With Children was successful in doing this. This is interesting, as Clarence Lusane notes, considering the characters were essentially characterizations of “white trash.” In direct contrast to The Cosby Show, which was the most popular show on television at the time of Married With Children’s inception, which depicted an upper class life, void of any real drama, or problems, Married With Children exposed the harsh realities of poverty and working class life. The bubbly, upward-mobility of the Huxtables is subverted by the dysfunction and self-destruction evident in the Bundy household. In fact, the original title of the show was “Not the Cosbys.” Lusane also suggests that the verbal sparring that is the staple of interaction in Married with Children was modeled after many of the black comedies that executive producer Michael Moye worked on in the 1970s, but that in the culture of television and network hierarchies, it would have been impossible to produce a show featuring black characters with the same class-consciousness that the Bundy family evoked. 

The main character of the show, Al Bundy, is depicted as the hard-working, hard-done-by working class man, and something of an anti-hero. He began working in a shoe store as a part time summer job in high school, but after an injury meant he could no longer play football he became stuck in the shoe-salesman job as his full-time career. Al is frequently nostalgic about his football-glory days, and constantly reflects on how his life might have been different if he had not been “trapped” into marrying Peggy straight out of high school. This is a particularly important articulation of the historical and social context of the 1980s when an economic downturn meant that unskilled labour jobs were at a minimum and the market depended on a workforce that could afford to buy consumer goods, such as the shoes that Al works so hard to sell. 

The interplay between the Bundy family and their next-door neighbour, Marcy and her husband(s) is especially interesting because of the way Marcy is constructed as a feminist. She is portrayed as dominant over her first husband Steve, and her quasi-feminist statements are frequently discounted and undermined by Al and Peggy. Marcy and Steve frequently lord their wealth and job security over the Bundys, and blame the difference between the two families on their  lack of work ethic. However, in later episodes, Marcy re-marries to a younger man, Jefferson, who is content to live off of Marcy’s income. Jefferson and Al become quick friends, and form an all-men’s group called “NOMAAM” (National Organization of Men Against Amazonian Manhood Masterhood) to protest against feminism. Marcy loses what little credibility she had as a feminist, and with it any potential she has to present resistance to normative gender roles.

[1] Brunsdon, Chartlotte and John Caughie, eds. 1997. Feminist Television: A Reader. New York, NY: Oxford University Press Inc.

[2] Lusane, Clarence. 1999. “Assessing the Disconnect between Black & White Television Audiences: The Race, Class and Gender Politics of Married… With Children.” Journal of Popular Film and Television 27(1):12-20.

[3] Lusane, Clarence. 1999. “Assessing the Disconnect between Black & White Television Audiences: The Race, Class and Gender Politics of Married… With Children.” Journal of Popular Film and Television 27(1):12-20.

[4] Lusane, Clarence. 1999. “Assessing the Disconnect between Black & White Television Audiences: The Race, Class and Gender Politics of Married… With Children.” Journal of Popular Film and Television 27(1):12-20.

[5] Lusane, Clarence. 1999. “Assessing the Disconnect between Black & White Television Audiences: The Race, Class and Gender Politics of Married… With Children.” Journal of Popular Film and Television 27(1):12-20.

[6] Lusane, Clarence. 1999. “Assessing the Disconnect between Black & White Television Audiences: The Race, Class and Gender Politics of Married… With Children.” Journal of Popular Film and Television 27(1):12-20.

[7] Lusane, Clarence. 1999. “Assessing the Disconnect between Black & White Television Audiences: The Race, Class and Gender Politics of Married… With Children.” Journal of Popular Film and Television 27(1):12-20.

Perceiving Reality

What is reality?

The best question to start one’s quest for truth.

No one sees reality as it really is because we all see the world through layers of cognitive biases & assumptions. So we see the world as we are, instead of as it is.

A good place to start being more circumspect about our beliefs is to question how we make our beliefs in the first place.

I always advise people now not to believe everything they think or feel. And to question the reasons for those beliefs.

Most of us, as humans, base our beliefs on emotion driven thinking. Rather than on strong evidence & objectivity.

As a result human beings are extremely gullible to unjustified beliefs.

Psychologists can tell you that most people make their beliefs first then look for evidence to confirm those beliefs. This leaves us vulnerable to subconscious cognitive biases like confirmation bias or observer bias.

As humans we can be very irrational about our beliefs and hold onto them despite disconfirming evidence to the contrary.

I strongly recommend studying how we, as human beings, actually form our belief systems.

Accepting that there is an actual reality out there is the first premise.

Then realising & understanding the limitations of our perception of reality is the next step.

Understanding how our minds perceive reality starts us on our journey into discovering what reality is & how to avoid the mistake of believing everything we think & feel is a true reflection of actual reality.

I believe that the best way to perceive reality is with a combination of:

1. Personal experience
2. Rational thought & reasoning
3. Empirical evidence.

The more of these three methods we use to understand reality, the more reliable our perception of it.

Our perception of reality is quite subjective.

It’s scary when one realises how unreliable our understanding of the natural world really is.

But rather, question everything!

You can have different emotions about knowledge. Certain information can make us feel happy or sad. But the information or knowledge exists independent of our feelings about it. The information actually doesn’t care what emotion it evokes. It just exists.

It’s a well studied & understood psychological phenomenon common to all humanity & used by most religions & even some businesses.

When looking at the evidence for cognitive biases, assumptions, phobias & prejudices being used as evidence for truth it’s frightening.

After 30 years of following my faith tradition & truly putting it to the test on many occasions I ‘knew’ I knew God was more real to me than life itself.

I had so many experiences which ‘proved’ to me of it’s veracity.

I too put my absolute trust in ‘spiritual knowledge’.

Till I realised I had been grossly in error. I came to realise the power of the mind in tricking us into believing in fallacy, as if it were reality.

Our minds are amazingly powerful & incredibly malleable which makes us vulnerable to severe errors in judgement.

As humans we are all susceptible to incredulity & even serious gullibility.

The more we understand the workings of the mind, the more we understand ourselves.

I recommend a wonderful book called ‘The Believing Brain’ by Michael Shermer, which looks at the evidence for how our minds work & how human beliefs are formed.

There really is no such thing as ‘spiritual knowledge’. It’s just explained very simply by how our minds work.

All beliefs are either justified by evidence or unjustified.

Declaring belief or faith in something is honest.

Hoping for something is honest.

Expressing a feeling about something is being open, and human, and authentic.

No-one can be absolutely certain of anything because none of us experiences reality in every possible way imaginable. As all of us merely perceives some aspects of reality, so none of us can know absolutely!

We can assess reality and judge the certainty based on levels of probability. So we assign degrees of certainty over information based on our assessment using the three methods I mentioned above:

1.Personal experiences,
2.Reasoning/rational thinking, and
3.Scientific evidence & observation.

Our assessment of the level of certainty is dependent on how much information we have about a subject, our preconceived ideas, and on automatic subconscious assumptions, biases, phobias and prejudices. These are often inculcated into our minds by the culture in which we grew up and live.

But asserting to have certain ‘knowledge’, when it is merely faith, hope and belief is, I believe, a form of self-delusion and shows a lack of thorough care in defining that level of certainty.

It is, of course, a common finding amongst all people and religions of the world and in every human being to some degree.

All of us, as humans, dislike uncertainty. Our subconscious minds abhor insecurity.

So, even if we are not certain, our subconscious minds will persuade us that we are certain after all.

A very useful way to avoid becoming trapped by unscrupulous people or organisations is to question even our own thoughts and emotions, instead of interpreting warm peaceful feelings as confirmations of the Spirit.

Being honest to oneself is the first step to having integrity and being authentic.

That is my goal.

Though I realize that our perception of reality is imperfect, I don’t hold to the concept of universal relativity.

There are many things in the natural world which the scientific method has discovered are universal certainties. Just like with mathematics and certain sections of science like physics & chemistry which are absolutes.

But I think it is seriously misleading for anyone to consider ‘spiritual knowledge’ in the same way.

One is justified by empirical evidence, the other by feelings.

Most religions use similar strategies to convince their adherents that they can rely on their feelings as confirmation of truth, & that feelings about God & their particular faith are somehow uniquely more reliable then any other emotions they may experience.

This complete & absolute trust in spiritual knowledge as being supreme is what scares me now about religion.

For it is this absolute knowledge in what God wants them to do which leads some to give up their lives in suicide bombings.

On the other hand there are many wonderful people in the world who are constantly striving to find answers through scientific enquiry. A good scientist is never satisfied that they have all the answers. They humbly try to disprove their research to increase the degree of certainty.

I have since come to realise that what I considered knowledge was merely belief and faith. Fervent and sincere as it was at the time. I thought I knew. I fervently & sincerely believed I possessed unassailable and certain knowledge.

I was, in effect, lying to myself. It was merely belief, hope and faith.

Always question your cognitive assumptions.

Humans are naturally gullible. Just look at the billions of other religious adherents around the world. I admit I was one of them.

We all like a good story! Especially if it makes us feel good.

“Cherish your doubts, for doubt is the attendant of truth.
Doubt is the key to the door of knowledge; it is the servant of discovery.
A belief which may not be questioned binds us to error, for there is incompleteness and imperfection in every belief.
Doubt is the touchstone of truth; it is an acid which eats away the false.
Let no one fear for the truth, that doubt may consume it; for doubt is a testing of belief.
The truth stands boldly and unafraid; it is not shaken by the testing;
For truth, if it be truth, arises from each testing stronger, more secure.
Those that would silence doubt are filled with fear; their houses are built on shifting sands.
But those who fear not doubt, and know its use; are founded on rock.
They shall walk in the light of growing knowledge; the work of their hands shall endure.
Therefore let us not fear doubt, but let us rejoice in its help:
It is to the wise as a staff to the blind; doubt is the attendant of truth.”

Life has more meaning as an Atheist

As a devoutly religious person finding increased meaning in life as an atheist was not something I could have even imagined, nor anticipated. Or for that matter desired by me at the time either.

It did come as a massive surprise that once my religious faith was gone my new perspective gave me a tremendous sense of connection with humanity like I’d never experienced as a Muslim. I felt more compassion, and more empathy with people than I’d ever experienced before in my life. And I thought I was a compassionate man before. I personally stopped judging others & became more accepting of everyone as individuals, and again I had not thought of myself as judgemental in the slightest before.

Being an agnostic atheist, secular humanist & scientific naturalist, and striving to become an actualist, has transformed the way I perceive the world, life & everyone in it in ways I could never have believed had I not experienced it myself.

I have more optimism for humanity, more joy in my relationships, and I feel a greater sense of urgency to live my life to the full.

This life has gained added value. It seems to mean more to me. Everything seems to mean more without the superimposition of a belief in life after death.

Since realising there probably is no personal God I feel that my life actually has more intrinsic meaning.

I surprisingly feel more excitement for life. More awe & wonder at the beauty of the universe. My curiosity about the laws of the Cosmos have intensified beyond belief.

And I cherish this ‘one life’ that I know I have more than ever before.

The potential for each human life feels more special.

I am truly shocked by these changes in feeling, but realise that some things which I had attributed to coming from God are actually intrinsic in my humanity and arise from my evolution.

I have always liked Stephen Covey’s moto of, “Live, Love, Learn & Leave a Legacy”, and it now seems more meaningful in my life than when I felt my ‘purpose of life’ was imposed on me by a Divine Creator.

Please, don’t feel that my personal experience of the way my life view has evolved is in anyway a criticism of your personal life view. It’s just my observations of what it has been like for me to transition from being a stalwart faith believer to becoming a secular humanist.

Having spoken to many others who are ex-Muslim, and in fact formerly religious people from many other faith traditions, I find I am not unique in this experience.

Having said all that, I now feel that religious belief in an afterlife can be detrimental to the human condition and to the progress of humanity as a whole.

I guess for many people this one life does not have the opportunities we have. Or the relative ease and peace of living in a modern industrialised country. Our life experience is vastly different from many who are born into poverty, or born into a criminal lifestyle.

We all have a life based on chance, choice & consequence. Often not as a result of our choices, but for most it’s other people’s choices which affect us, even our parents.

I just don’t accept there is any compelling evidence for there being any other existence for us besides this one. It may not be fair, or just. It just is.

As a secular humanist I believe very strongly it is our duty to help improve the lives of every single human being on this planet. To do our best to enhance the human condition so that everyone has the optimum conditions to thrive as a person. So everyone gets to choose their own life experience with the best opportunities for developing their talents and skills.

I think it is beholden on us to work towards this goal.

Belief in an afterlife is at best a distraction, at worst an excuse to squander it on preparing for a fantasy which might never happen.

So much time, thought, effort & money is spent on preparing for something which is just based on a hope.

I have no concern about receiving eternal blessings from a God, or avoiding his eternal punishments either. I think that if there is a God he would prefer we concentrate on this one life we’re living right now and on improving the life experience of all the inhabitants of this planet.

Any time we focus on an afterlife at the expense of this one we’re living right now we’re reducing our effectiveness in mortality.

Any belief system which idolises the afterlife is distorting our priorities. Some people would rather they or their loved ones died rather than change their beliefs. It is sickly tragic when religious beliefs are held in higher esteem than human life, but it happens far too often. It happens in many religions.

Why Faith?

There are many motivations for believing in something that our senses can't quite reach. One is just that, the idea that there is something more to this life than just life itself. Specifically, because we have a consciousness. I will save the idea of consciousness for another post. But with our conciousness comes an understanding of the world from a different point of view, namely, it allows us to ask the question: why are we here? While I can't know for sure, I don't see any reason to believe that there is such an answer. Why do we need a purpose? Is the life of a monkey any different whether it lives it in the presence or absence of a cosmological purpose? Is ours? Is our humanly purpose any more than to live a successful life, reproduce, give our offspring the opportunity to have a successful life, and aid in the survival of our species? What more purpose does anyone really need?

Of course, all this bears in mind the fact that most people on this planet have a "faith" in something divine, or at least outside of the physical realm in some fashion. So it seems that this is some trait that is inherent to who we are as humans, at least to some degree. But why is the case? Faith could be selected for in evolution, or it could be a by-product of another trait that was selected for, and our innate faith was linked to that trait through similar genetic combinations. As Dawkins puts in the The God Delusion, faith in a parental sense would be a desirable trait. If the parents of a child tell it two things, don't go to the river because of crocodiles and to dance in a circle to bring rain, a child will not be able to tell the difference between what is faith for good reason, and faith for the sake of faith. Evolution would select for children who trusted everything their parents told them, which would make them dance in a circle but would also keep them away from being eaten. Or it could be a side effect of something else.

But in modern times, with our current understanding of the universe and planet far exceeding what people knew even one hundred years ago, why do we still believe in something like a god? Indeed, an ever increasing percentage of Europeans are atheist, but in America and Islamic ruled countries, religion is as strong as ever. But why does anyone actually believe it? It's been almost 300 years since the advent of the scientific method being employed to discover things about our existence. We have discovered that the Earth is 4.6 billion years old, the universe is 14 billion years old, our solar system formed from earlier stars that died, and humanity has evolved along with all other life from a singular instance. We know about the laws of physics, thermodynamics, and mathematics that explain nearly all events we witness in the cosmos and everything we experience on this planet. We as humans rely on evidence to live life. Some of it is obvious to daily life, such as why we don't knowingly walk in front of a moving car (taking inertia, momentum, force, pain, injury, and death into account), to the not obvious, such as our understanding of electricity and magnetism. Before the advent of modern science, our evidence was based on experience. Now, there are many things we have come to accept through science that we cannot see or fathom, such as stars, galaxies, black holes, atoms, electrons, quarks, neutrinos, etc... But just because we can't see them doesn't make them any more relevant and important to our lives. As Horton the elephant would say, "A person's a person, no matter how small." And we experience their effects, which give rise to our own existence. So given all this evidence, what we see, what we do not see, what we experience directly, and what we experience indirectly, why does anyone believe in a god or have faith in something that cannot be seen, detected, or tested?

What reason do we have for believing in a god or gods? If all we have is text written by humans purporting to have divine origins, and a mass of people that believe it, why is anyone convinced? This question goes beyond asking for proof of God, but in the complete absence of proof of any sort, why is there faith in such a thing? Realistically, it probably traces to a time where people didn't know the answers that we know now, and so in order to explain these things they made up stories. These stories told a point. The story of Adam and Eve explains why bad things are in the world and what we must do to be good. The story of creation explains the perceived order in the world and the "purpose" of humans. But one must realize they are just stories, ones that were conceived four thousand years ago or more initially. To lose perspective of this is to lose both the meaning of the story and the answers that we know have in our possession. If someone was born today, with no influence from their parents or peers, they would probably come to learn the leading scientific theories of today explain most of the aspects to our life, and would probably find very little use for existing mainstream religions. However, there are many distractions to lead people to question the valid scientific theories in favor of something that is completely and utterly unsupported. I truly pity people who are so blinded by religion to not be able to appreciate the advances and knowledge we have acquired through science. Then there are those who believe God lies in areas which we can't explain, again relegating him to the gaps. But I think the first question I ask myself now, devoid of religious belief, is why I ever believed it in the first place.

Question of the Day: If God is truly beyond comprehension, what exactly can you have faith in?