Sunday, July 12, 2009

On faith as belief without evidence

I had the biggest scare of my life a few days ago when I spotted what I thought was a dead body lying under a tree near my condo. No joke. It was 7am in the morning. The body lay motionless and looked pale, as if all the blood had drained from it. And it was partially covered with dried leaves.

I went over, heart thumping. I prodded the body, hoping its not dead. After about a minute, the eyes slowly opened. It was a young male caucasian (no wonder the pale skin) and he was pissed drunk. I wasn't sure whether to feel relieved or tell him off for giving me a fright. By that time, other joggers had come over to see what was going on and I left it to them to sort it out.

For a brief moment, the incident did make me pause and think about the ultimate question. No, not where to have breakfast but if he were actually dead, where would he be? The Catholic heaven, the Mormon heaven or whatever heaven he believed in?

The same thoughts ran thru my mind years ago when I saw some people gunned down (gang fight) in L.A.

Some of my friends don't believe in heaven or anything God related. Too many inconsistencies and contradictions, they say. No evidence, no belief.

It's a loaded statement that invites a whole nebula of arguments that I won't get into here. One of the things that I'm glad about though is to have studied astronomy as a subject in college. You know what was the greatest lesson I learnt from it?

That I should take my eyesight, my mind and other biological senses with a pinch of salt.


Look at the night sky with your naked eye. What do you see? Probably nothing but black and a few stars. So you tell yourself its mostly empty space up there. You don't see nuthin', you assume there's nuthin'.

And then you look at the output of an x-ray telescope and suddenly your whole perspective changes. Damn, those things weren't there before. You saw nuthin' but there's a whole bunch of somethings there now!

A scientific journal estimates that 9 billion neutrinos from outer space pass through your thumbail every second. That's a lot of particles. Yet we can't see or feel a thing.

Your eyes, it turns out, are woefully incapable of seeing everything out there, which kinda makes the phrase, "I'll believe it when I see it" sound rather narrow and self-serving.

But this sets up an interesting proposition for everyone.

No one can disprove there isn't a flying invisible teapot orbiting between the earth and the sun. Just because you can't see it doesn't mean it isn't there. Just like the neutrinos and the nebula in the picture, maybe you haven't got the right instrument to see it. You can replace the teapot with anything you like. A giant chicken, a green alien, or a God of your choice.

It does throw a spanner in the works for me as far as beliefs go. Why do you believe what you believe? Because it feels so "right?" just like how others believe their beliefs feel so "right"?

Did you see something they didn't? Or did they see something you didn't?

What instrument did you use to see what you saw? Are you sure that's all there is to see? What if I could come up with a more sophisticated instrument to see beyond what you saw, like the x-ray telescope?

Still, as sophisticated as x-ray telescopes are, there's only so much they can reveal so I'm not going to say it gives me the final definitive picture of reality. 'Coz I'll be the moron if some guy comes up with a subspace gravitronic telescope tomorrow and sees everything x-rays can see plus a whole lot more. Yes, maybe even an invisible orbiting teapot speeding around the sun.

The point is, we don't know a lot of things and its silly to act as if we do. And worse, to believe that what we're told as "truth" is the ultimate truth. Obviously I have my principles for survival reasons but I keep an open mind, knowing that if I don't see the evidence, it may simply be because I haven't found a technology sophisticated enough to see it yet.

As astrophysicists say, the universe and by extension, existence, is a lot weirder than we think.

6 comments:

Eagle July 13, 2009 at 8:50 PM  

How wonderful it may be if everything including the universe is made visible through our naked eyes. There will be no more doubts, no more each group tying to outdo or propagate each belief. No more segregation of faith. The truth will be plainly be seen. The cons is possibly everyone fighting for the attention of the one true One then.

Damien Tan July 14, 2009 at 7:53 AM  

The other con is some people will refuse to believe what they see, or interpret what they see into something that benefits only them.

Xendis August 4, 2009 at 11:13 PM  

Hi Damien. I missed you. You know, I've been thinking the same thing as you did. Not about the complicated stuff below of cause, the one where people end up after they die. Cos suddenly I was reading the bible the first time in my life and actually read CHAPTERS of it. well, because my mom was told to look up visions of hell on the internet and I did it in her place and there were ALOT of references and then suddenly I picked up a very very dusty book my aunt lent me years ago about exorsim and demons that led me to the bible. Interesting. Then I was thinking. People have said that they seen heaven and had a dose of what it felt like. Likewise for hell.

Well, heaven is a good white place most people see that. And hell is a very dark place. What differs is that, the chinese/buddist says that there are 18 levels, they saw the 18 levels and the catholics/christians just see hell. Big, and stretches endlessly. It's like, everybody has gone to... different versions of hell. And I read up on Mormon... and it's... I shall use Bill Maher's athist term, WIERD. He thinks that all religion is wierd and Mormon is wierdest. An then it brings me back to think that there are claims of UFO and the bible saying that "in ancient times people wouldn't call a UFO a UFO, they'll term it as a flying cloud. Other wierd texts say that we're in the middle of an intergalactic war.

So I came to a blasphemous conclusion that it's in our midst and it's religion. Cos it's like different believers see different things.

well, Then again, they could have been seeing the same thing but describing it in a different way. Because As the bible states that God created different beings, like angles, the one that we see in the pictures, small cute little children with curly hair, exactly like caucasion toddlers without the wings, I have religious' testimony on them and, in the bible, the highest (I think if i didnt read wrongly) angles that praise him day and night, ( I'm not too sure about night because they also stated that everywhere is lighted and there is no darkness.) Have eagle/bird heads, wierd bodies and so forth. And you know, heaven is not earth so their things are a little different from earth. A bucket may look like something else but there is no other way to describe it other than a bucket because it held water and water isn't really water in heaven, it's something else like water that brings life.

And God likes variety as the book describing demons put it. It's not a one size fits all. So maybe he uses different approaches for heaven, like different regions or something. But you know, As along as you're good your whole life there's a chance that you wouldn't deserve too much suffering... I... Pray.... =\

Anyway, I've wanted to do a post on the revelation of the bible. yes I know I'm definately not the first, but somehow I think it's happening already. =\ Like we're in the midst of it. LOL! Might be old news... I don't really go for bible study.

I like your conclusion. Very good reminder. Thanks.

Love,
Xen

Damien Tan August 5, 2009 at 1:18 PM  

Hi Xen!!

Yeah its been a while since I updated this blog.

Where people end up after they die... if only people have come back to tell the tale. ^_^

Makes you wonder the same about all the fish and chickens we eat. Where do they go after they die?

People tell me the best way to know about these things is studying near death experiences (NDE), usually by people rescuscitated from heart attacks, etc.

Then they get stuck with a weird problem. Christians would come back from NDE and say they met Jesus. Hindus would come back and say they met Shiva. Buddhists would come back and say they met the Buddha. Its so funny I couldn't stop laughing.

There's archeological whispers that based on the evidence, Jesus was actually a short and dark-skinned man, not the tall caucasian guy with beard and long hair that people make him out to be. Can you imagine the storm it will kick up the vatican suddenly says all the statues have to be archeaologically correct.

Hence my view that reality is not out there. Its in here *points to the head*. Like the near-death experiences, people see what they want to see and believe what they want to believe.

Its just too bad science will not clear up the confusion. No study has ever been done on how consciousness arises from simple atoms and even what consciousness is. Until that question is answered, we will never know for sure where consciousness comes from and where it goes when the body dies.

Xendis August 15, 2009 at 1:56 AM  

WAHAHAHHAHAHA Imagine a scientific experiment

Science Experiment Volunters

Will be very well reimbursed.

The this research is about life after death. To see where we're headed after we die.

Volunteers will be have their hearts stopped for 5 minutes before being brought back to life. You will all be grouped in different categories according to your beliefs. Those who are unfortunate will be reimbursed 10 times as much.

Damien Tan August 18, 2009 at 9:22 AM  

Those who don't come back, we'll burn some hell money in the denomination of your choice, hehe. ^_^

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