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Does God Have a Belly Button?

According to the Christian bible, God created man in his own image. So this question occurred to me:  Given that we have one, does God have a belly button?  Yes, I know that is a silly question, but I’m sure a Creationist will have an answer for this, and most likely they will reject the question as being “irrational”, since they believe God was not created and already existed before the beginning of time. Presumably, that is a “rational” position to hold for them, as it is consistent with everything else they believe to be absolutely true without a shred of evidence, and  as unlikely as that might be available to them.

Now my theory is that God did not create man – and that in fact the opposite is true: man created God. As a result  – God – in a metaphorical sense, would indeed  have had belly button, since he sprang from the fertile mind of mankind – and today for those who still believe in him  the umbilical cord is still attached and keeping the idea of God alive a little bit longer.

And so man created God, together with all the other creatures that can be said to populate the metaphysical universe. He created God during the first dawn of reflective thought, when his mind became a mirror and he saw the world and himself in it; and when he did not know how or why he came about, or what his purpose in life was. And so he invented the idea of God – a parental creator and authority –  in response to the questions he could not find an answer for – like a soother in the mouth of babes – until such time he would come of age and has the courage to face his destiny on his own, and to accept full responsibility for it.

And this will happen, surely, when he is able to step back from his own ignorance with the realization that he isn’t the creature caught in the mirror,  but the actual source of it – that he is his own prime mover, and the embodiment of the force of life itself. That is: should we ever have the courage to open our eyes to consider and accept this.

 … It suggests that great discovery is the realization of something obvious; a presence staring us in the face, waiting until we open our eyes. (Michael Polanyi, in Science, Faith and Society)

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The Evolution of the Global Mind

Is the Cosmos here for us, or are we here for the Cosmos?  Then again, it could be neither, or both, or we are just innocent bystanders, and a by-product – if not a casualty – of a cosmic cataclysm of unknown proportions; it origins unknown and its final outcome yet to be determined. Not knowing the greater scenario that is being played out here, it remains a challenge to assign ourselves some particular role in it and see if we are able to follow it along with some consistency, hoping all the while it isn’t – in Shakespeare’s Macbeth’s words: “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, and signifying absolutely nothing …”

In this role we are driven along an evolutionary path of unknown origins, taking us who knows where – and that leaves us to figure out for ourselves where we are heading to. And in light of the human and environmental wreckage we continue to leave in our wake  it would be difficult to accept that homo sapiens is at or near the pinnacle of evolution. We clearly still have some way to go if the roughly two thousand years of our recorded history are anything to go by; and not until such time we are no longer our own worst enemy in trying to move ourselves ahead from our troubled past. You have to believe in something like this if you think we can much better than that, even if all we have to show for to date is little more than a blood-stained past.

But setting aside our self-disgust for a moment, let us look at this again with a less jaundiced eye. The arrival of homo sapiens introduced a volatility and a riskiness to the world which could be indicative reaching a critical stage in the evolution of the world. That such risk-taking would be justified can be seen in the context of fending off entropy – at least here on earth, and for the time being  – should that be the ultimate fate of the universe. And thus there will be an urgency to the evolutionary thrust to get done what needs to get done before time runs out, and to take some risks along the way. A risk management process by any other name.

You see, something very unique and significant happened with the introduction of homo sapiens to the planet: homo faber – man, the toolmaker – arrived on the scene. And while hitherto the spectacular creativity demonstrated by evolution manifested itself only from the inside out – through the incredible diversity of life-forms encountered here on earth, from the simplest plants and smallest single cell organisms to the largest or most complex ones – through a human being the creative forces of evolution are for the very first time being applied externally. With our hands – and with the tools made by our hands – we are able to reshape matter directly, and through us the creativity pressure of evolution goes to work in a greatly accelerated fashion – if not at breakneck speed – to whatever end it needs to get to …

Initially with primitive stone axes, then forged iron implements, followed by mechanized devices, and eventually through the ability to derive electricity from material processes and the huge array of material resources extracted from the earth we have been creating things of unimaginable potential if their development continues at the current pace. Technology is the only area in which our species has made substantive and measurable progress since we first opened our eyes as a creature capable of  reflective thought – knowing that one knows – and we have done so in a hurry.

Most importantly, we have made significant advances in the area of information technology, such as the internet, to the point that all knowledge we have accumulated of the world can be shared instantly at any time and potentially from anywhere. As such we have gone beyond the layer of our planet’s biosphere to create a dynamic layer of knowledge which is about the world, and which belongs to the world. In a sense, this layer of knowledge functions as the conscious mind  of the world.

(Some philosophers such as Theilhard de Chardin have referred to this layer of knowledge as the “noösphere” – meaning “sphere of reason” – and after the geosphere and biosphere it would be the  next evolutionary geological layer in the life of the planet.)

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Only the Day after Tomorrow Belongs to Me.

” … Some are born posthumously.”  This is  Nietzsche’s way of saying that he has looked beyond the current wretched condition of humanity and is anticipating the arrival of an enlightened being who represents a new and superior iteration of the human race. For this to happen, he claims, we must be: “superior to mankind in force, in loftiness of soul – in contempt … “

Much has been made of Nietzsche’s concept of a superior human being – the Übermensch – but apart from being completely misunderstood and maliciously misappropriated by Hitler’s Nazi scum in the previous century – this is the future human being that will be able to rise above the present human condition.  He will have overcome it in the sense of no longer being taken down constantly by all the human frailties that continue to threaten our extinction as a species: essentially endless everything – endless greed, lust for blood, consumption, exploitation, gratification, debauchery, procreation, stupidity, superstition. In short (!) everything that, as per our exceedingly well documented history, defines us as the immature, confused and seemingly self-destructive species we are so familiar with today.

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Aliens, Lost in Space.

Man is absolutely not the crown of creation: every creature stands beside him at the same stage of perfection. … And even in asserting that we assert too much: man is, relatively speaking, the most unsuccessful animal, the sickliest, the one most dangerously strayed from its instincts – with all that, to be sure, the most interesting! (Nietzsche)

How useful would it be to dwell on our past from time to time. Our past as a species, that is.   Perhaps it will help us to understand the present, and where we’re going with all of this, as for the moment I cannot pretend to understand much of the present at all. But – so the theory goes – if you look back to see in what direction we have been going, and to examine the things we have done in the past, you might get an inkling that we actually have a goal in mind – intentionally or not – to which we’re striving.

And so I wonder what it would have been like at the very beginning of our species, to leave the bush and our animal past, and start taking steps towards becoming the human being of the present. What was it that motivated us to evolve into a direction that  appears radically different  from our animal past, and in more ways that I can think of.

Some will probably want to debate me on this point as they will claim that this is a difference of degree and not of kind, but I would want to claim that our behaviour is substantially different from any other animal although there are many aspects of it that clearly hark back to our shared animals past.

However this might have come about, it will have taken a few hundred thousand years to evolve from beast to homo sapiens and to arrive at that apparent difference between us and the animal that we still very much are.

However, we no longer just live in our environment and accept it for what it is.  Instead, we  manipulate it, artfully, craftily, and  – unfortunately – more often than not destructively,  in order to sustain us, and to restructure it as we see fit, even if this would be to our own detriment, and perhaps risk our own extinction.

Substantively, though, what are we aiming for, or what do we want?  Given the state of the world today,  all I can see is  mass bewilderment, a morass of sociopolitical and ideological strategies and their ensuing variations in inequities. No, we really don’t know where we’re going with all of this– an entire planet full of people, lost in space.  And we’re the only aliens out there.

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Onward, Christian Soldiers!

For those who have argued that oil was the only key driver for the disastrous Bush plan to secure Iraq for the US, I suggest there may have been another strong motive to proceed with this dumb idea, from an entirely different source: the Religious Right.

Under the heading “Onward, Christian Soldiers”, on April 15, 2003, Max Blumenthal of the Salon Media Group in San Francisco writes:

Now that the Big Brother busts of Saddam Hussein are crashing to the ground from Basra to Kirkuk and widespread looting and violence have filled the power vacuum, Iraq remains tense and its future is murky. There, people are more concerned with things like water and medical care than the abstract world of politics. But in the West, a growing corps is squabbling over the spoils of war. While winners and losers in bids for reconstruction contracts and humanitarian opportunities are still being sorted out, one group seems certain to gain an avenue into the country: Southern Baptist Convention ministers prominent in the galaxy of the religious right. Among them is Charles Stanley, the former two-time president of the Southern Baptist Convention, a close ally of former President George Bush and a fervent supporter of the current president’s war on Iraq. ‘The government is ordained by God with the right to promote good and restrain evil,’ Stanley stated in a sermon. ‘This includes wickedness that exists within the nation, as well as any wicked persons or countries that threaten foreign nations … Therefore, a government has biblical grounds to go to war in the nation’s defense or to liberate others in the world who are enslaved.’ And sampling from a scattershot of biblical passages to inform his argument, Stanley warned that those who oppose or disobey the U.S. government in its drive to war “will receive condemnation upon themselves.

Even before victory has been formally declared, Baptists Ministries are just one phalanx in an army of Christian soldiers who see Muslim Iraq as an extraordinary new marketplace for their theology. Already, churches and ministries on the religious right are poised to send in missionaries and to ramp up broadcasts to the region. Like advance troops before the invasion, some U.S. military officials in Iraq have already staked out the country as a natural place to spread the Christian Gospel.

Given this kind of  “biblical support” Bush may have not misspoken when he went on national TV after 9/11 and used the word “crusade” in the context of needing to go after the “evildoers” who were responsible for that terrible calamity.

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Religious Beliefs

Although beliefs can  and do support each other, they cannot justify each other as at some point a belief must be anchored to reality in order for a belief structure to have any merit at all.

Take religious beliefs for instance. Examining a religious belief is like peeling an onion: after stripping layer after layer there is absolutely nothing at their core. Although some folks simply claim that they “know” that such beliefs are absolutely true – e.g., that a god exists – we can do little but take their word for it as they are unable to clarify what they mean by this assumption.

Beliefs in the existence of deities and other kinds of super-natural beings continue to show themselves to be a seemingly endless source of human tragedy. While they might in principle be no more than nonsensical and hence harmless beliefs, it is at the same time the sickly smell of centuries of savagery and senseless slaughter of thousands of people in the name of such beliefs – and primarily in the competition between such beliefs – when they become weaponized and a major cause of death and destruction on our world, from our distant past to the present moment.

One might claim that this kind of action has nothing to do with the religious beliefs themselves – and that they are misused when wielded as weapons of murder and destruction. No – it is precisely the unsubstantiated and irrational nature of these beliefs that allows them to be used in this manner. When you think you have the almighty creator on your side – all your actions are justified; you cannot be wrong!

Until we shake off the influence of these irrational beliefs, people will continue to be murdered for them.

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Escape from Entropy?

The second law of thermodynamics states that the total entropy of any thermodynamically isolated system not at thermodynamic equilibrium will tend to increase over time, approaching a maximum value, at which point the universe  – as we know it – will cease to exist.

Here I picture the universe as a fantastic fireworks display, initiated by “the big bang”, that lights up the night’s sky with incredible brilliance, but only  to eventually disperse itself into dying embers as it spreads out further and further across the darkening sky, and leaving only darkness behind.

However, there are some places in the universe where this process isn’t necessarily being hurried along so much. If you accept the premise that under conditions such as found here on earth matter appears to have the capacity to evolve into higher levels of organization when conditions allow for it – atoms will gather into molecules, molecules into compounds, compounds in to cells, cells into organism – it is at once a level of defense against entropy as well as an opportunity to reach even higher levels of organization .

This leaves alone the question of how or why this capacity exists, but I would assume the answer to it is gradually being expressed in life’s evolutionary tract and will be clear only after it has reached its destination whatever that may be. I presume we’re just a stop along the way, but it is a race against time by any other name.

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Existentialism Revisited

In Macbeth William Shakespeare reveals himself to be somewhat of an early Existentialist, when Lady Macbeth kills herself, and Macbeth reacts as follows:

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

If you are catching the flavour of what the Bard has on his mind here, and are intrigued by it, you might well be interested in a train of thought that has often been referred to as “existentialism”.

Now the term “existentialism” is a bit of a catch-all to describe a variety of philosophical views popular during the 19th and early 20th century that can be said to have some commonality through the notion that it is the individual who – in the face of a seemingly cold and uncaring universe – must define the meaning of existence for themselves, as no one else can do it for them.

This might or might not involve a reference to a deity of sorts – for which the former was definitely the case for Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) – often referred to as the original Existentialist – as well as for later thinkers such as the theologian Paul Tillich (1886-1965).

More typically, Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980), as a devout atheist in 1945 described existentialism as “the attempt to draw all the consequences from a position of consistent atheism”.  Not calling himself an atheist but an “unbeliever”, Albert Camus (1913-1960) rejected the existentialist label, but is usually included in the roundup of existentialist authors, as are Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) and Franz Kafka (1883-1924) who are really in a category all by themselves, and some of my very favourite writers.

The kind of thinking I clearly identify with existentialism is best expressed by Camus’s view that man’s freedom – and the opportunity to give life meaning – lies in the acknowledgement and acceptance of absurdity. If the absurd experience is truly the realization that the universe is fundamentally devoid of absolutes, then we as individuals are truly free.” Truly free to define the meaning of our own individual universe – but do we have courage and will to do this?

I like to think of existentialism as the attempt to re-define yourself in an increasingly absurd world as defined for you by the traditions of science, philosophy and religion; you cannot help but feel alien to it. Others cannot tell you who or what you are, or what your existence should mean to you. Only you can determine what you can be for yourself, as opposed to what others want you to be.

For this you must look at yourself not through the eyes of others, but from yourself, from the inside out – from within the acute reality of your own cognitive and spiritual existence. But this is no easy task – it means assuming responsibility for all your actions as you attempt to recreate yourself from the subjective contents of your stream of consciousness. It will require courage – the courage to re-invent oneself without being plugged into a god, a scientific assumption or the beliefs of society at large for confirmation that you are doing the right thing.

That this process might cause you anguish  and despair was a frequent topic for existentialist writers when they held that “… value of life – living –  is nothing more than the meaning we give it.”  (J.P Sartre).

For a more complete and erudite roundup of the existentialist movement I recommend Walter Kaufmann’s excellent 1956 anthology Existentialism: from Dostoevsky to Sartre.