Once again I came across one of those fun, “If you’re an Atheist then you believe in nothing,” emails and started thinking about all the things I do believe because of massive amounts of evidence, and that led me to ponder a lot of things I do believe but that have very little or no evidence supporting them. This list isn’t all-inclusive, but it’s some of the first that come to mind:
I believe
- there is no god or supernatural realm. This is not to say I don’t believe in a god, but that I believe there is no god.
- there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, but I do not believe we’ve yet been visited by aliens.
- humanity can continue long after the Earth is destroyed if we begin colonizing other planets soon, and our time to start this project may be running out in the next century or two.
- human thought will one day be interfaced into a single computer so that our collective conscious can outlast our species by billions of years.
- the origins of all religions are born not in ignorance, but in authority figures knowingly taking advantage of ignorance.
- science will never conclusively prove to the believers that there is no supernatural realm or that there are no gods.
- while a valid case for pre-determination can be made using biochemistry and physics (or maybe not with physics… with the advent of quantum theory, anything can be evidence for everything.), sentient beings have free will.
- as many religions fizzle out or turn into a weak blend of humanism and tradition, fundamentalist and extremist sects will be ubiquitous throughout the future of humanity.
- Michelle Malkin is actually the perineum (or taint) of a middle-aged gay whore from Van Nuys, California that somehow achieved sentience.
- there is no solution to global warming that does not require immediate cessation of all technological progress and a global reboot. I believe subtle transition is not a viable option.
- racism, sexism and homophobia are ingrained in humanity and will never be defeated.
- evangelists like Pat Roberson, Jerry Falwell and his son, Billy Graham, etc. know that what they preach is a lie and are motivated by power and greed.
- the Bush Administration knowingly refused to act on intelligence pertaining to 9/11 to use the attack to justify ousting Saddam Hussein, but the events of 9/11 were almost exactly as described in the 9/11 Commission’s report and not a US government conspiracy.
- the US and UK governments are hiding massive amounts of material pertaining to UFOs and abduction reports, although none of the hidden material coincides with legitimate alien contact.
- the majority of the events in the Old Testament, including the captivity in Egypt, were fabricated out of earlier myth and flat-out lies.
- Jesus was a man who actually existed, but none of the acts or words attributed to him are accurate.
- bacon is the single most delicious food in the universe. If we ever do make contact with extraterrestrials and they discover this fact, all of our pigs will be stolen by every other race of spacefaring creatures within 100,000 Ly of Earth.
As a physicist by trade, I disagree with your statement that physics provides a basis for pre-determination. In fact, the advent of quantum physics effectively destroyed the idea. Until the 20th century, there was the idea that if we could know the position, velocity, and acceleration of every particle, we could predict everything from the birth of Jesus to the development of the semiconductor. However, quantum mechanics showed that, because things exist in quantum superpositions, it is impossible to predict exactly where even a mere electron will go, much less a person. Twentieth century physics in fact provided a big push for proponents of free will.
Disclaimer: I am a real physicist. I am working on the T2K neutrino experiment in Japan. This may sound like a lot of buzzwords, but it’s actually, really true.
Comment by Bryan — 3 July 2009 @ 10:18 pm
Interesting. I’ve had an argument with a physicist who argued just the opposite. Appropriately amended.
Comment by Rev. J. Reed Braden — 4 July 2009 @ 12:15 am
I’d like to hear the argument for the opposite. Do tell.
Comment by Bryan — 4 July 2009 @ 6:41 pm
It was way above my head and I could only repeat the very basics. I will hunt down the email when I get time. Remind me.
Comment by Rev. J. Reed Braden — 4 July 2009 @ 7:03 pm
Bryan requires emails. See, I’m reminding you.
Comment by Bryan — 7 July 2009 @ 4:35 pm
Interesting list. If I may say:
“mmmmmmmmm… bacon” — Me
Comment by Stuart — 3 July 2009 @ 11:24 pm
I think that quantum mechanics in fact pushed us even further away form free will.
Either we are perfectly determanistic systems (basically, a clock if you will. Clocks set and altered by the outside events but clocks none the less), vaguely determanistic systems with some totally random parts, or we are systems with this magical free will thing.
Quantum mechanics does not give us any free will. It simply works as a source of perfect randomness. ie, it makes determinism non-existant. But it means that we are simply clocks which occasionally slip a few gears. We are 99% determanistic clocks, the other 1% is competely random jumbling up caused by freaky random quantum effects.
The closest analogy would be if you had a cities entire traffic system set up so that the amount of time it took for the light to stay green was set by a roulette wheel (lets assume this is a magic quantum roulette wheel where the numbers are truely random) This means the traffic system runs at random is is essentually unpredicatable and non determanistic. What on earth about this random effect makes it somehow magically free willish or special. mostly it runs by standard rules, but the wildcard aspect doesn’t mean anything, it’s just a characteristic of the system.
Note that I’m not a physicist, but I’ve never heard anything from a phys. I’m a chemical engineer. Which probably is why I classify the brain(and whole body) as simply a large electro-chemical reactor.
Comment by Peter "letsburn00" Hillier — 5 July 2009 @ 5:59 am
I would actually like to discuss this with you. Hunt me down on twitter, and we’ll chat.
Comment by Bryan — 5 July 2009 @ 10:58 am
I know jack about quantum mechanics. But I do know about http://www.baconsalt.com/
Comment by Aaron — 6 July 2009 @ 11:20 pm