Religion – Page 12 – Auxiliary Memory

Life of Pi–Is God the Better Story?

Director Ang Lee and screenwriter David Magee have done an excellent job of adapting Yann Martel’s 2001 novel Life of Pi to film. When I read the book back in 2004 I thought at the time it would never be made into a film because the novel was too cerebral, too narrative heavy, plus, how could anyone get a tiger to do all that acting?

Life of Pi the film covered a surprising amount of the content of Life of Pi the book. So far I can think of just three scenes I missed. First, story of Pi’s family running into Pi’s three religious leaders. Second, showing how Pi used turtles to survive, and finally, the scene where Pi is blind and hears people in another life raft.

Still, Lee and Magee beautifully succeeded with capturing the philosophical heart of the novel. If you loved the book, go see the film, you’ll be surprised by how well it was filmed.

Is God the Better Story?

If you haven’t read the book or seen the movie, don’t read beyond this point if you plan do either, because I’m going to analyze the philosophical statement of the book and it will spoil the story.

In the main story, a boy from India, Piscine Molitor Patel, who wants to be called Pi, is shipwreck in a lifeboat with a zebra, orangutan, hyena and a tiger named Richard Parker. Martel tells us this story very realistically and we are expected to believe it happened. But along the way, Martel takes us through scenes that are very hard to believe, like the carnivorous island with the meerkats.

Yann Martel has crafted a Zen kōan into a novel. Most kōans are short, “What is the sound of one hand clapping.” Yann Martel essentially asks, “Is God the better story?”

At the beginning of the novel and movie, in a pseudo introduction, the author is told by an older Pi, that he can tell the author a story that will make him believe in God. Yann Martel creates two stories, one very long, elaborate, fantastic, awe inspiring – and brutal, and a second that is short and brutal. We are asked which one we prefer. Martel is right, everyone, including realists like me, will pick the story with Richard Parker, the Bengal tiger.

So where does God come in? How can this story make us believe in God? Analyzing fiction for symbolism is tricky, but for me, Richard Parker represents God though analogy. At the end of the film and novel, when Pi has told his long fabulist story to two Japanese insurance investigators they refuse to believe him. So Pi tells a shorter, ugly version that we know is true, but hate to believe. Then Pi asks the investigators which story they prefer.

We all want to believe in the story where Richard Parker existed because it’s a better story than the one of madness, murder and cannibalism.

So what about the prediction at the beginning, that the story will make us believe in God? I believe Yann Martel uses the desire to believe in Richard Parker as a stand in for God, creating an analogy, that the readers and audience must make on their own. Pi desperately wants to believe in God. Pi asks us to believe in Richard Parker because the story of surviving in a lifeboat with a tiger is a better story than going mad and surviving alone.

The whole point of the novel is to trick the reader into the question: Which story do you prefer. Of course everyone prefers Richard Parker to be real. By transference, we’re ask to accept that belief in God is the better story, just like how we want to believe that Richard Parker existed. We’re never explicitly told that wanting to believe in Richard Parker is the same as wanting to believe in God, but I feel it’s obvious.

Yann Martel tells us people prefer religion over reality because the story of God is a better story than reality. And I ask: “Is this why people refuse to accept the fact of evolution because they prefer the story with Richard Parker – oh, I mean God?”

The novel is an elaborate metaphor to explain why people believe in God. It doesn’t say that God exists. Nor do we know what Yann Martel believes. It just says people prefers belief in God because it’s a better story than how we see reality directly.

What the novel is tricking us into confessing is that the belief in God, no matter how unbelievable that story might be, that it’s a better story than reality. That when we’re pushed to the ends of our physical and mental limits, we want God even if he’s cruel, vicious and indifferent. That the belief in God is what gets us through this life.

Has Yann Martel stacked the deck? Is God the better story? Yes, reality does sometime involve madness, murder and cannibalism. And even in the God story, people die, animals are cruelly killed and eaten, people suffer. If the audience was given the Richard Parker story, and a documentary about the evolution of the universe with cosmology and the evolution of life on Earth with evolutionary biology, is God still the better story. I don’t think so. Richard Parker is like a magician’s diversion. If you could watch this movie and blot out the tiger, the reality of Earth is magnificent! Richard Parker and God divert our attention to our fantastic reality.

God is only the better story when you don’t understand reality. Richard Parker is ferocious, terrifying, cruel, indifferent and doesn’t answer prayers. No matter how much Pi loves Richard Parker and wants his recognition, Richard Parker ultimately refuses to acknowledge Pi’s existence.

So why is God the better story if Richard Parker just walks away from us? I know many people who have long given up religion but haven’t given up on God. They say that God must have created us but walked away from the universe and is no longer involved. Personally, I’m confident there is no God and the size, age and origin of reality is beyond our understanding. I find it far more comforting to know the rules of our local universe and not feel the need to blame a superior being for bad things or beg for good things. If a bacteria, shark, drunk driver hurts me badly, I just accept it was the luck of the draw and not a judgmental deity deciding I had done something wrong.

Where the metaphor of Richard Parker breaks down is Pi can see Richard Parker, and we never see God. It’s actually easier to believe in Richard Parker than it is to believe on God. Life of Pi is a wonderful novel. I’ve read I twice now. And each time I want to believe the Richard Parker story, even though I know the truth is the story about cannibalism. How many times will I have to read this book before the realistic story is the better story?

What if the novel and movie had been about a boy that survived 227 days on the ocean and had endured the incident with cannibalism and madness and survived. No tiger, no zebra, no hyena, no orangutan, just Pi, his mom, the Frenchman and the Buddhist sailor? It would have been brutal, but the success of Pi surviving the ordeal would have been just as magnificent.

Why do we want a better story? Santa Claus is a better story than parents buying kids Christmas gifts from Target. The tooth fairy is a better story than throwing milk teeth in the garbage. Heaven is a better story than dying. But why is God a better story than reality? Is God a better story than evolution? If you understood evolution and cosmology, God isn’t the better story. God is a simpler story, and God’s story is endlessly confusing and contradictory. It’s just God is fantastically powerful like Richard Parker.

Even though I disagree with Yann Martel’s assertion, I love his fiction. See, that’s the real revelation in this. Fiction is the better story, and Life of Pi is very good fiction. Humans embraces fiction with an intense passion. Richard Parker is a better character than a cannibalistic Frenchman. And for many people, all the stories about God, are a better story than the brutal aspects of reality. However, there is nothing in fiction that comes within light years of evolution. All stories about God are just crude children stories compared to the complexity and beauty of evolution. Evolution is just as brutal as the Old Testament God – it’s just not personal.

Here’s the final kōan: Did Yann Martel write this story to make us atheists or make us believers in fiction?

JWH – 11/28/12

Afterlife

JWH – 6/26/12

How Would Life on Earth Be Different if Everyone Was an Atheist?

Belief in God and an afterlife affects how people see reality. What if one day we all woke up without any superstitious beliefs in the metaphysical? What if science caught on and everyone began thinking in the same way about how reality works – would that change the social fabric of Earth? Does religion help or hurt when it comes to doing good?

Think about what John Lennon suggested in his song “Imagine”

Imagine there’s no heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people living for today

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people living life in peace

You, you may say
I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one
I hope some day you’ll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people sharing all the world

If religion and metaphysical ideas disappeared would we come together as one? I doubt it, but I think we could start working on the real problems we face. I can’t help but believe that if people didn’t think a better life awaits them after death they would take this world more seriously.

I think religious divides us, but I think something else divides us more: politics. But politics are just the outward manifestation of our inner beliefs which are tangled up in religious beliefs. The litmus test for that division is how we treat the poor.

Some people hate giving to the poor. They feel the poor should work. They feel the poor are undeserving of charity. Welfare makes their heads explode with anger. Paying taxes for public schools galls them no end. Foreign aid and food stamps just annoy the hell out them. Their resentment knows no bounds when it comes to paying taxes.

Other people want to divvy up the wealth and make life on Earth decent for all.

What’s strange the first group tend to be Christians and the second tend to be secular or spiritual rather than religious. To the first group, socialism is a dirty word, even though their God was known for dividing the fishes and loaves so everyone could eat.

So, I’m not sure if religion disappeared life on Earth would be any different.

We are going through transformative times. Communism failed. But capitalism cannot provide enough jobs for all. There will always be a certain percentage of the population that are idle. We have incorporated many socialistic solutions into our economy, and many people hate that. If we revert to a complete free market, where it’s dog eat dog capitalism, we will have a world where the rich lived in armed enclaves and the rest struggle to survive in a cruel uncontrolled Darwinian conflict. The early Christians saw Jesus’ teachings as a solution to this problem, but modern Christians have moved away from those socialistic beliefs.

I tend to wonder if modern Christians haven’t jettison all the Christian philosophy and just hung onto the belief of heaven. They want to be rich on Earth, and rich in Heaven. If these people turned atheists one night I doubt anything about the world would change.

Religion is a distraction like watching TV. Believing in vampires or angels, it doesn’t matter, it’s all fiction. To get the world that John Lennon imagined doesn’t come from giving up religion. What we need is for everyone to stop thinking about themselves and resenting others.

The real solution is to think global but act locally. We have to solve the problem of creating a healthy Earth, and how to create an economy that provides the basics of a decent life for all seven billion people that live on Earth. Our problem is the 10% want everything for themselves and expect the 90% to go fuck themselves. As far as I can see religion is irrelevant to this problem.

Like I said, we’re going through a transformative age that people in the future will name and analyze. Will the Earth survive? The rich want to ignore that issue. They want to get as much as they can for themselves. They do not care what happens to the Earth. They do not care what happens to future generations. They do not care about the rest of the people living on the Earth now.

Humans are a cancer consuming this world. Unless we get our greed under control we will consume everything, including ourselves.

To answer my title question: Unless becoming atheist means becoming liberal and socialist, the disappearance of religion would mean nothing to life on Earth. The real issues to how we live on Earth lies elsewhere. I don’t think greed is a belief. It’s genetic, conditioned and animalistic. Religion neither helps nor hurts in solving greed.

I think people who want to help the world do so because they just want to help the world. But those people aren’t enough. Unless the greedy are brought under control, and we’re all greedy, we can’t save ourselves. Christians want to be saved, but the plight of the Earth is another kind of salvation. Unless we’re all saved, then we’re all lost. Whether a God is watching us or not, it does not matter, because we can only save ourselves.

JWH – 5/16/12

I am a Scientist

I am a scientist. Now that’s hard to explain since I don’t have a Ph.D. in a scientific discipline and work doing science experiments.

When most people say they are something, they are referring to a religion. I’m not religious. I’m an atheist, but I don’t like of thinking of myself in terms of what I’m not. I am a person that believes science is the best cognitive system for explaining reality. Period. I’m not sure if there are any other contenders. I’ve written off religion, so what is there? Philosophy and art? Scientists used to be called natural philosophers because they studied nature. It wasn’t until the 1800s that they began to be called scientists.

For years now I’ve been wondering if philosophy had much to contribute towards our knowledge of reality. I argue about this with my friend Bill who says no, and I defend philosophy with a maybe. Now The Atlantic has a wonderful article on this very subject, “Has Physics Made Philosophy and Religion Obsolete?”

People claim they want to know the truth. As far as I can tell, science is the only system that has any justification for providing the truth, all other intellectual systems fail in comparison to science. That’s why I say I’m a scientist. I believe in science. I put my faith in science. However, science isn’t a philosophy or religion. It’s a system for testing reality and developing a consensus about the results.

Currently, I don’t think science can answer all our questions. Aesthetics and ethics are two such areas outside of the domain of science, at least for now. Mathematics is the tool of science, and its own discipline. Mathematics is the only abstract cognitive system that works well with reality, and thus provides a tool to science.

Religion has no relationship with reality. It’s purely based on abstract ideas, all theoretical. Many religious people attack science, or refuse to believe or accept what science has learned about reality. Philosophers try to embrace science and keep their favorite abstractions. They hope to connect ideal forms with reality, but that is very hard to do. Justice is a philosophical concept, as well as a religious concept. People naturally want justice. It’s a deep seated desire. But there is no justice in reality. If a gamma ray burst hits the Earth and life on this planet is sterilized, does that reflect some kind of justice? The best we can do is create ethics and laws based on what the consensus of the population wants.

Right now philosophy can claim some value in logic, rhetoric, aesthetics and ethics.

There are two kinds of people on this Earth. Those who recognize reality, and those who live in fantasy. But even the fantasy believers accept science to a degree. How can you get on an airplane or go in for brain surgery without accepting science? Our houses, cars and gadgets are all products of science. The food we eat exists because of science, as does the medicine we take, the clothes we wear, and most everything else we come into contact with in our daily lives.

Science won a long time ago when it came to explaining reality, it’s just most people haven’t realized it yet.

When it comes to explaining how things work, science is the only legitimate tool we have.

JWH – 4/24/12

Should We Preach Science to the Faithful?

Now there are two ways to interpret my question: Should we preach science to the faithful? First, the religious right in America already believe atheists are trying to convert them through liberal education, so the question becomes: Should we not teach science to protect people’s faith? The second way to look at that question is to assume the faithful have a war on science which turns the question into: Should we teach science so everyone will understand that faith is fantasy?

Evangelical America already knows secular American has declared war on them. Liberals say, “Oh no, not us,” but I think they are avoiding the issue. Most liberals are not atheists, or even agnostics, and cling to bits of religion, mysticism and theism. They want to be modern, educated and embrace science, but deep down they want God and heaven to exist. They want everything science can give them, like brain surgery, GPS, television, computers, cell phones, antibiotics, and so on, but they don’t want to let go of God. The conservative religious right have always known deep down that science invalidates religion. That’s why they want to do away with The Department of Education, change goals for higher education and rewrite K-12 textbooks.

For decades liberals have embraced the idea that all we need to do is embrace the separation of church and state and the religious will be protected and the liberals can keep science and education. They see this as fair, ethical, legal and most of all high minded. Sadly, this is completely clueless as to what the faithful want. They want America to be a Christian nation. Liberals have no idea what this means, or what it implies.

It would be fantastic if religion was a personal belief that was never political and always personal, but that’s not the case. For decades the religious have wanted to take over politics to get what they want. They are pushing their agenda so I’m asking should liberals push back? Of course, the faithful will claim we’ve been pushing them for decades and they are only defending themselves. It’s a complicated issue.

Nevertheless, we have to ask: How hard should we teach science, skeptical thinking, and evidence based reasoning? Essentially, the faithful are saying, “God says things are like this…” and we’re saying “There’s no God, but science tells us this….” As much as some people want to believe that God and Science can coexist that’s just not true. Early humans embraced metaphysical fantasies long ago and it’s taken millennia for some people to break out of those fantasies. Our choice is accept the fantasies or accept the truth about reality – there is no sitting on the fence.

I’ve never liked proselytizing. I’ve always thought the idea of missionaries traveling to other cultures to convert those people away from their own religion as offensive. I’ve always been a skeptic, an unbeliever, an atheist, and I’ve never wanted to go convert the faithful to my way of thinking – until now. What’s the harm in letting people believe in God, or believing they will go to heaven and meet all their old relatives and friends. It’s a wonderful dream to dream. What harm could there be in leaving people alone to believe in religion and all the things religion promises them?

But the Republicans are forcing me to make a choice. They have made their religious goals political. They have put education and science in their gun sights. They have essentially made the two political parties Democrats=Science and Republicans=Religion.

I use to believe it was important to let people believe whatever they wanted until I realized the faithful had begun an anti-Education campaign. Conservatives believe liberals are pushing education as a way of destroying their religious beliefs. Many liberals disagree with this, and even I don’t think it’s a conscious agenda, but I do think a good education tends to dispel religious beliefs. It’s natural for the faithful to fear higher education and to want to control the K-12 curriculum. I think liberals are being disingenuous not to recognize that a good education does erode religious belief.

But I think the faithful and conservatives need to realize that attacking the Department of Education, Higher Education, and the money we spend on K-12 schools is equal to the idea of liberals wanting to do away with Churches. The educational system is essentially the secular church of liberal beliefs. Now fundamentalists know this and that’s why they are attacking the educational system. Liberals have their heads in the sand if they don’t see this. Atheists believe in science and education, it’s not a religion, but it a belief system.

I know conservatives can’t understand this, but liberals and most atheists are very big believers in the freedom of religion, and they don’t want to challenge religious thinking directly, and especially not politically. But conservatives don’t see that, and they have decided to attack the educational system.

The faithful feel its their duty to spread the word of their faith and to attack evil where they see it. Of course, Muslims and Mormons believe this too, and they are growing faster than Christianity. All the aggressive faiths are in a battle for the hearts and minds of the people of Earth. My question is: Should atheists, skeptics, free thinkers, and other non-believers get in on the action by converting new recruits? Among the religious the war for souls is really a battle for who describes God best. Even though most Christians and Muslims hate each other, they do share the concept of God.

If atheists become missionaries for science, it will become a battle for God versus Science, and that could lead all religions to band together, and they’d have a big majority. Lucky for believers in science the faithful don’t get along. However, does that mean we need to make scientific converts to win the battle for scientific thinking?

When you think about it though, isn’t that what’s already happened around the world? Fundamentalism is pushing back against the secular all across the globe, in a disunited front? I think the recent rise of atheism is a retaliation to that movement. Maybe it’s time we all put our cards on the table and be honest. There are many Christians out there that want America to be a Christian theocracy. I think they are jealous of Islam innate relationship with politics. I want politics that’s based on reality and science.

On the surface Republican politics appears to be about reducing taxes, especially for the rich. And the rich members of the party see reducing the size of the Federal government as the best method to this goal. Below the surface are the religious members of the Republicans, and they’ve latched on to making a smaller Federal government as their method to undermine liberal education. The reason all candidates fall all over themselves claiming to be the one true conservative and the reason why they fear being called a moderate is because they are united in in their goals even though they want to achieve different outcomes.

For 2012, the question becomes: Are there enough pro small government voters to elect a small government president? Conservative politicians think they represent the majority of Americans but I can’t believe that. We’ll find out in November. Who are you going to vote for – the Party of God or the Party of Science?

JWH – 3/11/12