Ant Gods

My friend JC, over at uglybutbearable.blogspot.com has a very interesting post on what God could represent. He takes the example of ants in ant farm will attempt to make their "God" in their image - thus the idea of a God these ants will carry may have nothing to do with their "real" "God" - the owner of the ant farm.

I'm going to try taking this in another direction; to help point out the issues I see with the belief in a God - or at least, the notion of a God as it is popularly believed.

Imagine a 2-d ant, in fact imagine a colony of 2-d ants. Consider the world they live in to be a perfect sphere. Now being 2-d, it is inconceivable for these ants to understand a sphere, since their understanding of the world is going to be limited by the physical characteristics of the world as they see it. Although they live on a sphere, for the 2-d ant a sphere will be nothing but a bunch of circles. They might discover that the circles get smaller as you move up or down - but there is no up or down in their world.

This will become a mystery then, probably a mystery they will be unable to solve. Why do their circles get smaller at some places and larger at others? The change in circle size will probably also affect physical characteristics of their world. Ants that are believers will put this down to a "God" - a mysterious supernatural force that affects their world in innumerable ways.

Now, through a series of scientific advances they may chance upon a mathematical proof that claims a reconciliation of all the phenomena they observe lies upon the existence of a 3rd dimension, in which the sphere exists.

Impossible, most ants will say. "That's ridiculous! A 3rd dimension!" Of course this doesn't mean that it isn't true!

It does not also make it any less revelatory or supernatural than a belief in a God.

There are 2 ways of interpreting the above statement - (a) God is an easy concept that people rely on to escape their non-understanding of the world therefore religion halts science; (b) it does not matter what you call it as long as you seek to understand it.

Being no expert in theology, I have no idea what the consensus among religions is regarding understanding the world but I'd be surprised if the teachings in all the Holy books tell you not to seek understanding. In this way I see religion and science co-existing. It is a narrow view on what religion and science represent that I guess underlies most of the debate between religion and science.

But then again, it's hard to reconcile this with the apparent statement in the Bible that the world is 5000 years old, for example. Or that there were flying saucers during the time Ram was king.

As far as I'm concerned however, as long as you maintain a curiosity about the world and a basic humility regarding the extent of our knowledge, there does not seem to exist any room for a debate. In this light, the problem that I see is not with religion/God per se, it is the interpretation of it - this is our Holy Book, and it is completely correct, so don't challenge it - that is the problem. Of course this is not to say that scientific beliefs are easily challenged either, but rather that they are allowed to be and that too in a systematic fashion, more or less.

The beauty of a logical proof demonstrating an aspect - physical or psychological or both - of the world and that helps generate insight - that beauty you can call God. A God, that works in a less mysterious way.

Of course there is the question - why do we find beauty in a mathematical proof? (Well some of us anyway). Is there is a "understanding the world" gene within us, a la Richard Dawkins' Selfish gene?

Old World

Sometimes you forget how good the good ol' stuff was:

The only place where you can dream, living here is not what it seems.
Ship of white light in the sky, nobody there to reason why.
Here I am, I'm not really there, smiling faces ever so rare.
A let's walk in deepest space, living here just isn't the place.

Stalks of light come from the ground, when I cry there isn't a sound.
All my feelings cannot be held, I'm happy in my new strange world.
Shades of green grasses twine, girls drinking plasma wine.
A look at love, a dream unfolds, living here, you'll never grow old.

Listen here

then listen to this

There's something very much in the spirit of the futuristic worlds conjured up by the best Science Fiction writers - philosophical debates of what it means to be human in a distant unfamiliar world is one way of summing it up...? There is pervading sense of loneliness through all of this work, and in the first song as well.

Which reminds me, I need to see Moon.

A Theory to Disregard

Every creative pursuit - academic research, music, writing, painting, film, photography, self-respecting journalism - is essentially a method to understand the world.

The methods vary greatly, but - once you strip away all the inessential stuff (tenure, fame, "selling out", etc) - the ultimate goal is the same. In all likelihood, these methods influence the final product, which then selects the kind of person who works in any one field.

Or is this "obvious"?

WTF lyric

From that path-breaking movie, Pyaar Impossible, a song called "Alisha":

Hey boy get me dripping with ice
Get down on you knees and say whats nice

??!!?

Is this supposed to be some sort of female empowerment thing? The boy gets on his knees to *ahem* say what's nice? And why is the girl "dripping with ice"? Is she cold which is why the boy needs to say what's nice? If *cough* warmth is what the girl needs, what good is talking?

More importantly, how is the girl "dripping with ice"? Ice is solid, how can one drip with it?

If Data had Feelings and could Speak

You raise the blade, you make the change
You re-arrange me 'till I'm sane
You lock the door
And throw away the key
There's someone in my head but it's not me.
And if the cloud bursts, thunder in your ear
You shout and no one seems to hear
And if the band you're in starts playing different tunes
I'll see you on the dark side of the moon

"I can't think of anything to say except...
I think it's marvellous! HaHaHa!"

Prescient? You decide....

Song Lyrics aka Lazy Post

The Darkside of Aquarius has robbed us of our souls and minds

Here come the riders as the wheel of Dharma's running out of time

Slumdogs

Generally it is hard to argue against really smart people.

But:

"The deeper problem, widely recognised but seldom addressed, is how to free people from bad rules. I floated a provocative idea. Instead of focusing on poor nations and how to change their rules, we should focus on poor people and how they can move somewhere with better rules. One way to do this is with dozens, perhaps hundreds, of new “charter cities,” where developed countries frame the rules and hundreds of millions of poor families could become residents."

-- Paul Romer

Ah! Poor developing country people, they cannot be trusted with developed-country business such as Rules...!