people

waves

can we explain what makes each human being so special?

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People are amazing. We think with minds more complex than a supercomputer, we are conscious and self aware. Science says we are "no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules", yet we seem to be so much more. Can we learn anything about life and God from looking inside ourselves? Or can natural processes explain it all?

In the clues section, we look for clues to the answers to the big questions of God and meaning in life. Each topic discusses the facts and arguments believers and unbelievers use to support their viewpoint - a world of philosophy and ideas in just a few pages!

being human

People generally want to feel of value in themselves, and respected by others. Low self esteem and depression are not generally considered to be 'good' states of mind. People want to be loved, and to love.

Most of us believe people are of higher value than other animals, because of our ability to reason, to love, and because of our self awareness.

If people take away life or innocence, or demean human life, we are angry - even though their behaviour might be quite logical from a self interest viewpoint.

But if the universe has evolved randomly from nothing, it is hard to see how any of this could be true. We would be no more than the elements we are made from, a stage in evolution. We might feel differently, especially when we are in love, but it would be emotion not logic that would tell us so. Our special concerns over taking human life (not a view held everywhere in this troubled world, unfortunately!), would be a result of the way we had evolved, but would have no deeper truth.

Following this logic, some people believe human beings are indeed no more than animals, or even no more than chemicals, predetermined to behave in certain ways. Morality is no more than behaviour which provides an evolutionary advantage for our tribe.

"You, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules." Francis Crick

But this is a virtually impossible belief to actually live out, and if someone treated people this way, we'd more likely think them monsters than anything else. Murder, rape and theft might (in some circumstances) be good evolutionary strategies, but we still don't believe them to be "right", and society cannot function with such an ethic. (These ideas are explored more in the next topic, "it's not fair!".)

Such a view is also endlessly contradicted by love songs, films, literature and art, which commonly build on themes of 'true' love, heroic action, self sacrifice and concern for others.

(The modern trend towards 'blacker' stories is interesting, and possibly disturbing, in this regard, especially if it encourages, as some think it may, different and less humane behaviour. But popular culture still tells us that people matter, even if it is only some people.)

Counselling, medicine and much of the law are also built on the premise that the individual matters.

I think we can probably conclude then that most people assume, generally without thinking about it all that much, things about the significance and value of themselves and the human race, which would not be logical unless something beyond blind evolution gives our existence meaning.

do we have a choice?

Our ability to make choices among different possible decisions is interesting. Our brains are apparently electro-chemical computers and science is unable to detect anything else that makes up our mind or consciousness. (See are our brains like computers?) So all our thoughts are the result of electro-chemical processes in our brains, each one caused by other brain processes or external stimuli. But our decisions are included here, so it seems that all our choices are in fact determined by previous brain activity or external events. There is nothing else in our brains to break the chain of events.

This is certainly the view or many neuroscientists and philosophers, but it goes against all we seem to experience, and it makes a mockery of holding a person responsible for their actions, perhaps even of having a discussion where we urge someone to make a different choice.

There is an alternative view, that our minds are more than our brains, and our minds are able to make genuine choices because they can influence the chain of events by changing our brain processes. This view cannot be demonstrated scientifically, neither can it be disproved, but it accords with how our thought processes seem like from inside, and some philosophers support it.

So we seem to have a clear choice (it is hard to get away from our feeling that we truly have freewill!) - either we hold that we are no more than what science can measure, and we have no real choice, or else we believe we do have real choice and therefore that our minds are more than just our brain processes. The first view is a natural corollary of believing that there is no God and natural processes alone produced the human race; the second view could be held by an atheist, but possibly more naturally follows from a belief in God.

stop making sense

People think (sometimes). Philosopher Descartes used this as his starting point: "I think, therefore I exist."

And we tend to think our thoughts are logical and 'right' enough to tell others, whether it is a mathematician proving a theorem, two men arguing politics in a bar or an author writing a book. Sometimes we even get angry when others don't agree with our logic - just check out letters to newspaper editors about political issues, or web forums run by atheists or christians.

Where did our reason or logic come from, and is it really 'true'?

Cows get deep and meaningful

Cows get deep and meaningful

Some say that there is nothing inherently 'true' about reason, it just happens to work - we have evolved that way because a reasoning organism is more fit to survive.

But we generally don't behave like that. We are reluctant to believe that our logic is arbitrary and our thoughts determined by brain chemistry alone. When we argue passionately about issues, we show we really believe that language communicates and the rules of logic make sense, not just in my head, but also in yours. In other words, we believe logic and reason can arrive at 'true' conclusions.

Saying something happens to work is not the same as saying it is fundamentally reliable and true.

Natural selection is a process that selects on the basis of adaptive behaviour that gives a survival benefit. So if our brains were the result of evolution alone, our thoughts would have survival value, but would not necessarily lead to truth. To be sure, at a practical level, understanding things correctly will often have survival value (failing to recognise a lion's roar may reduce a hunter's chances of survival), but sometimes an approach that is over cautious may have survival value but would not be truthful. But more importantly, even if practical thinking confers survival value, it is hard to see how abstract thinking of the sort employed in discussing questions of meaning and God can increase our chances of our genes surviving. In fact the notorious "absent-mindedness" of many intellectuals suggests the contrary.

Those who believe our thoughts are determined by brain chemistry face an interesting dilemma. They may wish to argue strongly that everything can be reduced to brain elecro-chemistry, but they cannot argue that this belief is 'true', because that is a self-defeating argument. If reason is not true, but only gives us outcomes that fit us to survive, then that argument itself cannot be considered 'true', only convenient. The argument has destroyed itself. Every book written by a determinist urging us to accept their belief is thus in some senses a self contradiction.

Mathematicians and physicists tend to believe that physical laws accurately describe and apply to even distant parts of the universe. Some scientists argue that the initial conditions at the big bang could have produced this result, but agree that such initial conditions would be extremely unlikely. But if the universe arose as a result of random chance, it is hard to see how an organism could evolve to suit conditions on earth, yet still reason 'truthfully' about the far reaches of the universe.

"If the world is rational, at least in large measure, what is the origin of that rationality? It cannot arise in our own minds because our minds reflect what is already there. Paul Davies

An apparently rational and intelligible universe thus leads some people to look for rationality in an outside source. Theists would say that only if a logical God created us can we explain our logical minds. Atheists believe natural selection is sufficient to explain logic. Neither view is provable or disprovable, our conclusion must remain a matter of probability and judgment.

But if we take our thinking and truth seriously, it seems we should consider that there may be a larger meaning in the universe.

meaning & mental health

Freud and others after him have argued that belief in God is a neurosis. Some scientists believe it to be an aberration that will pass away with education. However numerous studies indicate the contrary conclusion - those who believe in God tend to be less prone to mental illnesses and generally more healthy and happy.

So whether God exists or not, belief in him/her/it seems to provide some advantage for healthy living - a curiously perverse result of evolution!

So ..... ?

If we believe that there is no larger meaning in the universe, and the human race is merely a happy (?) result of evolutionary processes, we may have to let go of some of our cherished illusions about human freedom, personality and rationality. And generally, we don't want to do that - the world seems to need more humanity, not less.

But the alternative, believing that there is some meaning and reality beyond the physical universe discoverable by science is sometimes scorned, among the more educated in the western world at any rate. Belief in God seesm to provide an understanding of who we are that other beliefs struggle to provide.

Most people seem to have a bit of an 'each-way bet' - they believe in random evolution but also meaning and human-ness, without being that much concerned whether these two views can logically go together.

my personal opinion

I am persuaded by the argument that a purely materialistic view of humanity is not livable, and is denied by every fibre of our being. I am not all that worried that scientists don't tend to support this view - I think scientists tend to use their authority as scientists to make statements beyond their expertise in drawing conclusions about life and meaning - on those matters, they are just as likely to be right or wrong as you or I.

what do you think?

Do you think it is necessary to be logical and consistent at this point, or are you happy to believe in materialism and humanity? Are you happy to trust the scientists, or the philosophers, or do you have some misgivings about this? Or would you rather just get on with enjoying life rather than worry about all this? In the face of the uncertainty, what do you think is the most reasonable conclusion?

links

Do some more reading on brains and free will - review the references in are our brains like computers?

Make a comment on the forum.