sixtyPercent: Cochlear Implants, Aviation, Technlology, and Philosophy 2006/04/06
Meta-Religion
It may be somewhat annoying to come to this blog expecting another post on cochlear implants or software development, only to find another rant on religion and philosophy. It's not pleasant for me either, as my Adsense revenue goes through the floor on philosophy days -- not too many people buying Nietzsche or Kierkegaard ad keywords I guess.
My Sartre quote from a while back ("god shaped hole) got me reading a bit more about existentialism, rationalism, and a few other systems of thought. I am obviously so far down the amateur scale in these fields that I have no hope of contributing an original thought, but that's OK. I am interested in my own reactions to learning about these things, and perhaps by writing about them in a public forum I will get useful input on new directions to pursue.
So what have I learned? Plenty! As long as I can remember I have been a fairly strict rationalist, with a secret longing to understand and maybe even partake in a bit of irrational behavior. I don't believe that you can make someone believe in a god or God -- and I find it quite amusing and frustrating that I don't but wish I did (at some level). Regardless, I have observed that others do believe in a deity, and I enjoy learning about how all of us choose to fill our "god-shaped holes". So I consider this "hole" -- the sense that there is something beyond the rational, to be a characteristic of a being -- just like the shape of a face or the color of one's hair. We all have this gene and it may be hugely present in some people or completely absent in others. If that's true, then trying to convince someone that their set of irrational beliefs is right or wrong is like discussing the rightness or wrongness of their hair color (i.e. a waste of time).
The old joke says there are two kinds of people in the world -- those that divide people into two classes, and those that don't... So there's two kinds of people in the world -- those that agree that we all have spiritual needs of various sorts that can be met through a variety of needs -- and though any given set of personal beliefs may be dearly held and closely adhered to it is fine and perfectly valid for others to have a different set of beliefs -- and those who don't. Perhaps we should both now stop and re-read the previous run-on sentence. "Those who don't" I suppose consists of people who have decided that all of humanity has the exact same god-shaped hole (whether non-existent, tiny, or huge), and that they know the correct set of beliefs that perfectly fit the mono-hole.
The latter style of thinking strikes me as rigid, and in engineering we learn that unless you're careful rigid often means brittle (especially when confronted with new data that doesn't fit the basic assumptions), but in any case the purpose of this essay isn't to criticize but rather to express a (rational) belief and a wish.
I believe that rationalists can find a place in their being for irrational thought, so long as it is acknowledged as such. (That's not new -- I think that's what Kierkegaard was saying). I believe that this irrationality can take many equally valid forms, ever dynamic in response to our existence, and serving a useful purpose -- great in some, and inconsequential in others. I wish there was an institution that embodied this set of beliefs and encouraged its development, critique and dissemination -- sort of a meta-religion, that didn't involve a bi-annual "building fund" drive.
Ah well, at least I got to talk about Kierkegaard a bit -- let's see what kind of ads show up.
