What really gives more meaning?

What really gives more meaning? That you were created for some specific fate (arbitrarily decided by some creator)? Or that you exist, for whatever reason, and must find and create your own meaning?

Words

I've always loved words.

I love their texture, their taste, the way they roll off my tongue. I love the way you can sense the kinship between related words, through their sound or their spelling or structure - that you can almost trace the history of a word a few generations down. Words can sometimes seem alive that way - with their own family history and descendants waiting in the aisles as the language grows and changes - branching out into an, as yet, undetermined future.

I like playing with them and breaking them and putting them together again. I like them swirling around and melting into each other. I like the sound of that choice word going splat against the wall. And I love picking up the squishy little pile of whatwasonceaword and moulding its mangled form into something beautiful.

I love subverting them - taking a word and making it do my bidding, giving it meanings no one would ever impute. You can make words dance, if your soul sings them right. And you can sing to other souls. You can calm your own disturbed thoughts by putting them to word. You can stroke lovingly at another's angst till it is soothed and goes to rest.

Then, there's the subtle melting of a word into a meaning it might just have in just the right context, a juxtaposition of meaning, form and sound to make it play the games you want it to, to make it tease at your senses - looking like one thing, sounding like another, meaning something else altogether or maybe just its motion, as it leaves your tongue, conjuring up visions of things unsaid.

I Finally Signed Up

I've been an atheist for a while. And I'd been a Catholic struggling to keep his faith for even longer.

What I haven't been for a long time is a vocal atheist. Up until the beginning of last year, I'd not had the courage to come out about my lack of faith to my family, although a number of close friends knew, though funnily enough, one of my best friends was still in the dark about my waning faith.

I'd never really seen a need to be vocal about god's existence or lack thereof. That's when Richard Dawkins' God Delusion plopped into my lap and shook me up. That book came at just the right time in my deconversion and helped me move from closet atheist (almost apologetic that I couldn't have faith in a God) to someone convinced that it's important to let people know how much bigger life has become ever since I decided to believe in something bigger than an anthropomorphic single-planet-focused god.

So, in that vein... I've finally added the symbol:

On the Creationist Museum

Not into posting links normally, but this one is hilarious...

The Article

"There’s a room that has all the stuff God made on each day; the exhibit looks like holiday photographs or the brochure for an eco-safari. Included with the birds of the air are, apparently, the bats, who are mammals and will be annoyed. But we don’t have time to nitpick. What is truly awe-inspiring about the museum is the task it sets itself: to rationalize a story, written 3,000 years ago, without allowing for any metaphoric or symbolic wiggle room. There’s no poetic license. This is a no-parable zone. It starts with the definitive answer, and all the questions have to be made to fit under it. That’s tough. Science has it a whole lot easier: It can change things. It can expand and hypothesize and tinker. Scientists have all this cool equipment and stuff. They’ve got all these “lenses” and things. They can see shit that’s invisible. And they stayed on at school past 14. Science has given itself millions of years, eons, to play with, but the righteous have got to get the whole lot in, home and dry, in less than 6,000 years, using just a pitchfork and a loud voice. It’s like playing speed chess against a computer and a thousand people with Nobel Prizes."

The Truth

That's the thing about the truth
It's so delicate and helpless,
So fragile and evanescent
That you have to protect it -
You have to cup it in your hand
Or it'll go out like a tiny flame
Dying in the smoke that surrounds it.
That's what we're here for -
To see the truth,
Whatever little of it we understand
And bear witness
For fear that it would die
Under the onslaught of the world
And all the lies within it.
That's what gets me -
The truth is so weak,
All on its own,
And you just don't get it
Or you wouldn't try to bury it
And destroy it;
You wouldn't try to paint it
Into black and white -
The truth is too beautiful
To be restricted to the monochrome
But you don't get it
Or you wouldn't lie to me.

Paver Stones

I like paver stones, especially those angular bendy ones. I love the way they fit together... just so... interlocking and perfect.

And you can always tell if the workmen really cared:
You can see if they lavished their love on these little bricks, if they cherished them and made them fit, if they sought out the best for each and the other...
Or, if they tossed them down in casual disregard and let them lie there - broken and humbled - forever akimbo as evidence...

Miscera

Some thoughts exist and come to me... they travel from far and wide... they appear from nowhere... and disappear soon after...

Some thoughts jump out of my unconscious into my thoughts... and leave when they please... or stay.. or not... the Miscellaneous answer to no one...

Some thoughts are messy and not well thought out... like the gooey goodness inside a soul... or body... a messy little collection of stuff entwined in itself... and maybe me... perhaps necessary... like a small intestine... or unimportant and obscure... like an appendix, that you'd dismiss in snobbish gesture...

Epiphany

I created my god, who made yours?

A child was born,
A bunch of nerves
And wet sinews
Thrust into the world,
Alone
To search and seek,
And find which way was truth.
I was not helped -
No charity
To guide my feet
And hold my hand
And lead me on
To clarity -
In fact, on lies
And false hopes,
I was fed
To cloud and confuse
My aching head...

So I turned to the Spirit of the T,
The old, that is,
Before JC
And the thought occurred
As I suppose it must
To such minds as those of us,
Who are predisposed
To dwell upon such thoughts as those:
What kind of being
What god is he
That bridles with
Such human jealousy?
In the new is not more pleasant
For he sent himself,
His son, you say,
But himself, the same,
And though steeped in blind paradox,
Meaningless in its circularity,
Offered himself, his son, himself
As sacrificial present.
And even if my mind refused to reel
I would still be obliged to feel
A little miffed, annoyed too
That he fooled me, he fooled you.
A glorious mystery you'd believe,
That one is the other,
But not the same.
Can you be so daft?
Can I be so lame?
How could be, this miracle
That he be both, water and an icicle?
Oh the confused men
And self-righteous fools
Who gather 'round in awe
At these farcical jewels!

So I fashioned anew
A god of air,
A god with a small g
To show his humanity,
A god of hope
And not despair.
I gave him no name,
For names exist in reality
And he was but escape
For isn't that
What, deep down, we
Really, really crave?

I still don't know what I believe
Just it cannot be
In some silly fairy tale -
A god who one moment grants reprieve
And withholds it the next
To gauge our lowly hearts
When put, so 'justly', to the test.
I try to be straight and rational
But cannot help but feel
That there is still meaning,
Tho' it may illusion be
And if that's so,
That would fit,
If meaning is an illusion,
That's my god,
That's it.

Easy Answers

Easy answers,
I'm sure you'll find
Settle easiest
Upon the mind.
But given half
A rotten chance,
They'll twist you up
And make you dance.
They'll spin you round
Quick and nimble,
And claim the same
To be so simple.
A fairy exists,
You'll start to say,
A man-like angel,
That guides the day.
For who a watch
Has ever found,
With no maker
At all around?
But the truth, you know,
Ain't quite so silly -
That the world is run,
Quite willy-nilly -
In fact, this world,
Sense does make,
If you've the will
And gall to take,
Each belief,
Each idea too,
And hold it up
Like something new...
See its flaws
And study it
Or you'll find
You've been outwit
By simple tripe -
Sagacious nonsense,
By fallacy
And delusive pretense.

This Beautiful World of Mine, of Ours

I don't know why people automatically assume that without a belief in god, you can't appreciate the beauty of the world around you. It's like everyone assumes an atheist is actually a Hollywood Atheist. Or maybe it's because of the incorporation of Platonic ideals into (mostly Western) religion during the Renaissance. Or maybe it's just part of what Daniel Dennett calls 'belief in belief' - as if we (human beings in general) assume that belief in an irrational proposition somehow helps. Or maybe we're biased to assume that a rational person has no feelings, even though that's rather stupid - my limbic system doesn't shut down when I use my frontal lobes. Feelings are just that - feelings. It's only rational admit they exist it's evident that they do. A rationalist is not an automaton.
And yet, we still assume that an atheist or anyone who focuses on rationality is some strange version of Spock.

Well, I'm sorry if it shakes your worldview to hear it, but that's not true at all. You don't have to believe the world was created by some imaginaryandanthropomorphicskyfairy to appreciate the beauty of a soft wind blowing through the trees sounding like the oceans have crossed mountains to blow past you, or the night sky and its infinitearrayofstars (how can looking out at that not inspire awe in you??), or a meandering blue river rounding a curve in the Himalayas...

I've seen so many non-believers, like myself, who can't help but look at the beauty of existence and feel this huge ocean of wonder breaking upon the shores of their conscious minds.

Are you telling me that atheists like Carl Sagan and Douglas Adams didn't feel overwhelming awe at the sheer magnificence of existence as it is? You have to read but one line of anything either of them wrote, and you'll see what can best be described as religious awe without the religion.

Another idea that's similar to the youdon'tbelieveinskyfairies therefore youmusthatetheuniverse one is mostly commonly expressed somewhat like this: "You shouldn't try to study the world with so much rigour, you end up destroying the beauty of it by studying it too hard." Or "stop using your brain so much, you overthink things and that ruins your ability to enjoy the world."

That's just a cop out.

I've never ever found anything in the world that became less amazing in my mind because I studied it. It's always been the reverse - contemplation increases the exquisiteness of any experience (good experiences get magnified by the increased complexity they acquire with more thoughts and experiences getting connected and bad ones get spread out/deconstructed and easier to deal with).

To quote a previous post:
"Knowing that lightning is actually a cascade of electrons takes nothing away from the almost mystical feeling that a good lightning show generates in you. In fact, the knowledge, of what exactly each of those lightning bolts is, adds nuances to any awe I feel. Hell, even the phrase a cascade of electrons is beautiful - makes me think of waterfalls in electric blue."

Imagine how much more involved in the beauty of the world you are, when your neurons are not only firing in response to the sensory information about the majesty of it all but also appreciating how simple rules and processes are continuosly interacting to create the complexity of the universe.

But it feels so Magical

We look upon the world as if it's a strange and bizarre place. In fact, my favourite quote from my favourite author says much the same:

"There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable...

There is another theory which states that this has already happened."

- Douglas Adams

But the truth is, if you think the way the world works is weird, it's not the world that's wrong, it's you. It's not the world's fault that your model of reality doesn't correspond to what reality actually is. You have a bunch of extremely limited senses, that give you access to some information about the world - about enough to keep your ancestors down the long line to homo erectus (and before) alive long enough to produce offspring (and eventually you) - but that is far from sufficient to really understand the world. Can you see x-rays? I can't. I sorely wish I could sometimes. I wish I could look at the sky at night and see all those parts of the spectrum that have to be "regularized" in the Hubble images for me to be able to see them. That's not to say the night sky isn't beautiful on it's own, but imagine having access to that kind of perception... Given how limited we are, isn't it weird of us to expect to understand it all directly through our senses? Or without definite effort?

But we don't like to be told we're weird. It's much easier to be indignant and blame the world for it's apparent weirdness.

Or maybe we just don't like not knowing. Maybe there's something within us that is inherently curious. Or maybe curiosity isn't enough, given our tendency to jump at the easy answers. Maybe we just don't like admitting we don't know (even to ourselves). Maybe that's why when we don't know an answer, we try to come up with the best to fit the information. Maybe it's not that at all, and I'm way off - that's why I'm saying maybe - I need to be conscious of the possibility of being wrong, because it's so easy to jump at one specific answer and build fences around it. The scary part is how easy it actually is to jump to the wrong conclusions, or make them up as you go along. Maybe that's why when people saw lightning in the sky and couldn't fathom where it came from, they decided there was a big hairy man in the sky throwing shiny spears around. Maybe that's why magic is one of the human universals, because saying it's magic is the same as saying God did it - it's the easy answer.

And at the same time, I have to acknowledge that there is something fundamentally magical about the feeling that wind and snow and rain and so many weather phenomena conjure inside you.

So I accept it feels magical, that my perception of the world appears beautiful (and so intricate you can get completely lost in it!). My natural tendency is to exult in the exquisite splendour of the universe. That doesn't make the magic real (in the traditional sense of magic, I mean). That doesn't make it more likely to get good weather and a good harvest if I killathousandbunnies to propitiate the residentweathergod. I'd be better off offering those bunnies to the local weatherman, though only marginally, and, maybe, only if it generated enough goodwill for a youscratchmybackandIpredictmoreaccurately sort of thing. Any magical feelings inside me are just that, inside me (except when expressed) - they are not a facet of the universe, they are my reaction to it.

Knowing that lightning is actually a cascade of electrons takes nothing away from the almost mystical feeling that a good lightning show generates in you. In fact, the knowledge, of what exactly each of those lightning bolts is, adds nuances to any awe I feel. Hell, even the phrase a cascade of electrons is beautiful - makes me think of waterfalls in electric blue.

Understanding the world, even when it goes against everything your sense data seems to be saying, takes nothing away. I find it adds layers and meaning and mental bridges to other thoughts and other ideas that can be so beautiful - taken separately or together.

Coalescence

Scattered drops coalesce -
Merging to form more
Than what was before.
Random droplets
Fly as if before a storm,
Trailing away
Like rain on a windscreen.

Patterns emerge,
Almost spontaneously,
And grow,
Fractal like -
Reaching outward and inward,
Ever expanding
And deepening.

Nebulous thoughts
Words, ideas and imagery
Drift through the atmosphere
Pulling together, colliding even,
Calling out to me,
Whispering softly under the wind.
They sound like clouds in my head
That I pull into straight lines.

They feel strange
And yet familiar
Like a long lost friend,
Or love,
I'd learnt to forget,
Who appears out of almost nowhere,
Bursting into my consciousness.

Sudden Realizations Are Rarely As Sudden As They Seem

I've been working on a poem called 'Epiphany' for ages. It started with a single line years ago - "I created my god, who made yours?". And then it just sat there, in an unnamed text file on my computer, until a few months ago, when I suddenly got the inspiration to try and finish it. I haven't yet, or I'd be posting it here, but I did make progress...

Anyway, it struck me that I came up with that line at a time I was still struggling to hold on to the faith I was brought up in; and I started wondering just about when I started questioning religion, when I first departed from the dogmas that had been drilled into me... The funny thing is I can't really pinpoint any specific thing...

If forced to pick a moment, I'd say it was the time I realized the Catholic church isn't half as tolerant as I had idealized it to be - when I was told the official doctrine was that Jesus was the way, the truth and the life, not just a way, a truth or a life.

But that was just part of an awakening I'd been struggling to deny for the longest time... Even when I was a child, I don't recall ever believing in an interventionist god - my god of the time was more of an imaginary friend, to whom I'd retreat and talk about things, especially when I was down about something or the other. Had to deal with a spot of bullying during my first year in a new school, a period when I was my most 'religious' in any sense. But I wasn't at all ritualistic (at least not religiously).

A Truth-seeker's Creed

Though steeped in ignorance and imperfection, though possessing a flawed perception and understanding, I hope I might, I hope I may, see the world as it is today.

As I journey in my quest for answers, may I ever wary be of those that seek to give pause to curiosity.

May I revel in mystery, but not as an end in itself, rather as a challenge to be overcome or an opportunity to explore.

May I be brave enough to challenge my beliefs, no matter how resolutely I may hold on to them, for if something can be destroyed by the truth, it should. May I be steadfast in finding the truth rather than proving anything to be true.

May I not be fooled by what is merely elegant, but seek what controls my anticipation and predicts results, which may itself be elegant, though this is in no way a prerequisite.

And yet, may I appreciate the elegance of this universe and its ways. May I be and live in awe of the sheer grandeur and magnificence of existence, always.

May I seek perfection, so that every step forward encourages one more, so that I never pause and look at what is accomplished as enough, so that I journey on to a boundless future.

May I not limit my thirst for knowledge for any reason. May I seek and seek and seek, for this universe is so grand and there is so much more to see.