I imagine there was a large amount of, “why?” “how could this happen?” “this makes no sense” type sentiment after the recent shootings at Virginia Tech. This type of thinking is, while understandable, silly. In fact, I think it is amazing these things do not happen more frequently. The fact that someone slaughtering 50 people can cause grief across the nation — nee, the world — is about the strongest testament to the safety and luxury we enjoy as anything else I can imagine.

We should accept that these types of events will, on occasion, in our society, transpire. Trying to find excuses for the nature of humanity — video games, violent movies, poor air quality, whatever — applies but only tangentially. The truth is that they occur because we live in a society that purposefully allows bad behavior and poor decision-making but, paradoxially, never expects truly harmful behavior to happen as a result.

If you want to look for reasons why the Virginia Tech shooting happened, here are three reasons why:

1. We place very little social pressure on people to behave a certain way. We are likely to console the murderer’s family and the school. Were we to arrest or kick the family out of the country, fine the teachers and administrators, and bankrupt the school, someone probably would have raised a larger warning flag and connected the dots. But we believe that collecitve punishment is inappropriate. People generally think the book 1984 is not the kind of place in which they wish to live.
2. We have very rudimentary means for judging someone’s emotional health and rationality. If we had some sort of invisible hand guiding people toward patterns of thought that increased emotional health, there would be far fewer unhappy people — unhappy people willing to shoot up a school. There would also be fewer groups of people who think it is rational to ask a priest to perform an exorcism, leaving more room for more effective psychological treatment. As we do not have this invisible hand, we err on the side of caution and treat nearly all forms of thinking as equally healthy and rational. Our failure rate is pretty high when we do otherwise.
3. The most important thing: We do not really think a few people getting shot up is a very big deal. Sure we talk a lot of talk — or at least the 24 hour cable networks do — but at the end of the day, we value our freedoms more than we value the lives of those 50 random people. The 300,000,000 people who were not murdered by some crazy college student place real value on our freedom to say things without having to worry that the thought police are going to come and arrest us. I am sure that we could have made the lives of those 300,000,000 people miserable enough that a depressed lunatic could not have murdered the 50 unfortunate victims at Virgina Tech. Even if you think this is an acceptable tradeoff — something we should do — were this the case, the resulting despair would more than make up for the difference in a higher suicide rate.

Still, if we want to play the blame game take a gander at this:

Below the fold, the Post looks back at Virginia Tech shooter Cho Seung-Hui’s last year of life, revealing that last summer, Cho’s mother sought help for her son at a local church, where the minister believed he needed deliverance from “demonic power.”

It is absurd that any person living on earth in the 21st century still talks about “deliverance” and “demonic power” in a manner other than jest. The fact that half of this country and the majority of the planet still thinks this way is mind-numbing. The boy’s family, teachers and friends should have been talking with their son, trying to understand why he was so angry, and gotten him some real help — theraputical, medicinal, whatever. Taking him to a preacher and saying a bunch of Hail Mary’s every night is irresponsible.

Have I been reading The God Delusion? Why yes, I have. How is it you can tell?

Previously: defending my belief that God exists, discussing what that means and why Dawkins is intolerant.

Awhile back Robert Wright interviewed Lorenzo Albacete, an ex-Physicist turned Theologist and Catholic University president. He makes an amazing point: while science can explain how things work the way they do, science does nothing to answer the question of why. Science — at least in its present form — is not capable of addressing these problems.

Science explains things in a completely different way to the way we personally experience them. The last chapter in Phantoms of the Brain — Do Martians See Red? — addresses this conundrum. Science can explain how we see things — the cells in our eyes that respond to specific frequencies of light that then enter our brain and excite other cells that activate other cells that have stored the concept of red. But this is categorically different to how we actually see red; Science explains everything from bee dancing to color vision the way a deaf person would explain the experience of listening to Beethoven’s 9th Symphony.

Some people suffer strokes that make them blind. They say they cannot “see” anything. Ask them to put a paper into a slot that is either horizontal or vertical, studies show that a few will succeed every time. These people “see” in one sense of the term, but they damaged enough of their brain to render them incapable of experiencing seeing. These people are visual automatons.

Why do we not do everything in this automaton fashion? Why do we stand resolute, insisting against all evidence: “I exist. I am. Cogito ergo sum“?

Science cannot answer these questions. Science is not interested in these questions. Science simply concludes, “because”. Things exist; we exist; we see red; we love; this is how the world works; end of question; lets stick to answering how does all this work, how did things come to be…

But I am not here just because.

Yes, my body is here because of my parent’s DNA, the laws of Physics, the need for life to beget life.

Yes, my mind is here because of the endorphins, electrons and chemicals swirling around my brain and body.

But I am not my body.

I am not mind.

I am me. Myself.

My soul.

No one can take this away from me. No one can give this to me. It is completely personal. I created it for myself. It is made by me, for me, of me. Simply,

me.

I have learned so many things about the Middle East during this recent Israel-Lebanon war: Druze, Canaan, Mount Lebanon, Phoenicia. Amazing to think Arabs trace their lineage back to Abraham and Moses. These people were at it fourty centuries ago!

Stellar. Through the help of Andrea, I have finally found an author who rivals Orson Scott Card’s ability to touch upon the human spirit. Mary Doria Russell’s book, The Sparrow is nothing short of phenomenal. She has so many poignant, significant things to say about humanity. The main character’s suffering is immediate and immense. As a catholic turned atheist turned jew, her understanding of Catholicism is deeply textured and human, exposing both its strengths and weaknesses. I would call it an interstellar rendition of the story of Job.

Buy it. Read it. Now!

Contact. Speaker for the Dead / Xenocide. The Sparrow. Why do all the best stories about extraterrestrials tackle the metaphysical and theological (counterpoint: Spielberg)?

Our deep yearning to know, to discover, to make contact is, at heart, our desire to learn about ourselves. We yearn to understand our soul–to learn who we are. To meet God.

For those of us who have too little time on our hands, you can read another version of the same email. I think in an ideal world we would have no privacy. We all just want privacy to hide the freaky true nature of ourselves. If we just came to realize and accept that we are freaky, its okay that we fantasize about sheep–after all, the Chinese character for “beautiful” is a combination of big and sheep–perhaps we could then be more tolerant of the freaky nature of other people and less interested in using the lack of privacy to record the noises someone makes while in the bathroom to hold against him.

Of course, no one would ever actually go for this. Saving face and acting weird are both deeply drilled into our DNA (but so is homicide).

Don’t read more of this entry. Just read the previous entry. I’m warning you! Well fine, but don’t say I didn’t warn you:
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So, I write one email that contains the word God and uses religious imagery and prose, and all of the sudden the family email circuit board lights up like Las Vegas.

I’ve had these feelings since I started college. It is probably the main thing my college education gave me. The South (where my family is from) seems to have corrupted the meaning of God more than anywhere else in the US. Their experience of this has made my family reject everything God represents because of the evil and demons they have seen it create in men. That I have accepted God makes them fear I might turn into something they have rejected and more generally just confused at how I could have arrived at such a different answer than them.

However, there is nothing incompatible in our beliefs. My family has seen that the God people worship is fake and rightly chosen to close their mind to him. I have done the same–I doubt I will ever find any use for church, the bible, prayer, throwing 5 yen coins into a can or anything like that–but I did not have to close my mind off to all things religious. Luckily they had already done that. I was in no danger of looking at God and seeing a version distorted by the lenses business cartels like Christianity, Buddhism and the like place over Him. Instead I opened my eyes and saw merely light–millions, billions, trillions of lights. I see one in every person, rock, nook, cranny and tear. Instead of trying to build a new lens of lies to understand Him–thereby distorting God for the empowerment of a few rich men and enslaving the rest of humanity–I saw God for what He is.

In a universe that should be darker than the blackest night, vaster than the largest ocean, our world is teeming with light. It is bursting with life, activity and information moving from one thing to the next. That is God. He is not the one who makes thunder, or the guardian of heaven, or someone who cares whether you abort your baby. God has no point, no meaning, no motive or interests. He doesn’t tell us what to do or help us along. He is simply there. That alone is pretty amazing.

I was going to ramble on more, but I started clipping my nails, which interrupted my thought process.

The only other meaningful thing I have to say is that (for those of you who know me) the vast majority of assumptions you have about me are not suddenly different and I’ll be sending my kids off to prayer every Thursday–or Sunday, whatever. Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton and Aristotle have done far more to help mankind understand what God is than any Pope, priest, monk or rabbi every will. Dogmatic devotion to the Koran or the “Ten Commandments” will as likely create the Crusades or Joan of Arc as Mother Theresa. And looking at the numbers, I see a lot more Crusaders than Mother Theresa.

1. Love or money? Love. Everyone in the US will answer this way.

2. What would it take for you to die happy? While scarry, I would die happy now. Every moment of my existence is a miraculous, logic-defying assertion of God’s beauty and wonder. I stand amazed, proud and satisfied with everything God has given me the gift of experiencing. Each moment of my existence compounds the awe of last, and will continue doing so until the time for me to pass on arrives.

3. Do you prefer old fashioned, comfortable and reliable or new, challenging and exciting?
A person needs a sturdy base of things they can count on to root themselves through the sands of time. From this implanted strength, one can develop a trunk of interesting things, people and activities that inspire one to shoot off in new directions of thought, feeling and experience. Once these leaves have soaked in enough energy from the light of life, they will bear the enlightened gems of fruit whose flesh can feed and nourish the souls of other men, leading them to do the same.

But one must be careful not to be overindulgent and insulate himself from extravagance with a consistent stream of self reflection and hubris, less his well of meaningful existence dry up, leaving him peppered with dots of hate, regret and self-loathing. One can also help avoid turning into such a hard, dry, crusty soul by fertilizing your base with the fruits of others’ knowledge and experience. By doing this one can expect to lead a full-bodied, well-rounded and richly-coloured life.

My initial answer was highly negative. I have a strong reaction to the word “old fashioned”. Who but a depressed and powerless person would wish to live life how they imagine the past to be rather than how they life it today. Those who aren’t depressed would either feel comfortable with the way life is now or excited about the challenge of making that way. Those who are depressed could only feel that way because they feel unable to make it that way.

4. Who is smarter men or women? Given that some of the stupidest people I know spend most of their lives hating people for “being such idiots,” I do not feel qualified to make a judgement on such a question. I also know that some of the smartest people I know life their lives in deep misery, or fail to live up to their potential. What is smart? Someone who: buttresses your opinions? Lives life happily? Earns lots of money? Gathers a following? How about this: how do you define smart?

5. Do you want kids? (would you have kids if you did it all over again?) Yes, as one is biologically wont to do.

6. What part of your life would you relive differently? There is nothing glaringly obvious. I wish I wasn’t so lazy in College. I wish I was a less self-centered person when I was younger. Oh! I would have majored in Psychology.

7. What is the most satisfying thing you’ve ever done? Discovering God. Or perhaps later when His loving embrace began to touch and warm the marrow of my soul.

8. What do you most fear? Sinking back into depression and hating the world again.

9. What person you know personally do you most admire? I admire Kenny and Katie Askew (Diana’s parents) for providing me an example of a healthy, long-term, loving relationship.

Tonight was amazing. We started out at Apre discussing our philosophy of life and everything.
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Ask and ye shall receive. The Slate God provides for us all.

Dawkins sounds like an interesting fellow. I like the idea that we are hairless for sexual and lice reasons. I would love to read a book of his should it fall onto my doorstep at christmas. It all sounds very reasonable and informative except the last bit:

“You’ve called religion a ‘dangerous collective delusion’ and a ‘malignant infection,’ ” I said. “Don’t you think you’re underplaying it a bit?”

Dawkins turned, smiled a small fox smile, and said, “Yes!”

Why should we repeat the mistakes of slavish devotion to Aristotelian philosophy with Darwinism?

Christianity did not begin the scourge of science. However, over the centuries, Aristotelian philosophy was so seemingly powerful and complete in its conclusions that the church adopted them as near gospel. Of course the four elements were fire, earth, air and water. And of course earth is the heaviest, which falls the fastest and thus is at the center of the universe. Only a fool would suggest something besides Earth was at the center of the universe. Just look up at all the stars and sun today: Who revolves around who?

I imagine it was ancient philosophers like Dawkins who displayed such an intolerance of others’ views (because he was so certain of his own) that instilled the same manner on the church. We always knew the Earth was a sphere (not just Columbus), and over 2,000 years ago we had Greeks proposing a Solar-centric world-view. It was rejected because of the ludicrous distances between the Earth, sun and planets it required. When it finally became apparent that the Church’s conclusions were wrong (and those ludicrous distances true), the church was unable to correct what it had so forcefully asserted.

In my mind, far better to allow religion into science, and leave all theories acceptable to religion. A smart investor diversifies his funds. I see no reason priests shouldn’t as well. Also, scientists shouldn’t be so damn insistent that God does not exist when we do not know the first thing about anything. Anything that answers more whys than it creates is an incomplete answer indeed.

I seem to be on the reflective bent tonight. This is a good breather from the sedated drudgery of Japanese life and bile of politics. I figure I would practice some plagiar and quote Anselm’s Ontological Argument for the existence of God.

God is that than which no greater can be conceived.

If God is that than which no greater can be conceived then there is nothing greater than God that can be imagined.
Therefore:

There is nothing greater than God that can be imagined.

If God does not exist then there is something greater than God that can be imagined.
Therefore:

God exists.

There you have it. Most Philosophy professors could go in to the reasons why this argument is wrong. For me though, it speaks truth. More than anything else, this argument is the reason I will as happily (if not more so) answer “yes” to the question, “Do you believe in God?” as “no”.
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