Is it "The God Problem," or is it more fundamental?
Does operating with a prehistoric biological intelligence system in the age of spaceships and quantum computers help?
Walter Rhein of I’d Rather Be Writing has penned an intriguing article in our continuing discussion of “how one should view the actions of humanity, as a whole, over the centuries.” For my part, I view it as a fundamental “flaw” of human nature stemming from how evolution molded us into what we are today. The details of both arguments are laid out in our various posts, and our positions are fully explained.
How "The God Problem" Is at the Heart of All Human Suffering
Have you ever considered how dangerous it is to entertain the possibility of the divine in human form?
Walter states, “In this case, the assumption is that human beings are flawed. People say that as if it can’t be questioned, but I don’t think it’s true. In fact, I think it’s a lie. Even if you don’t think it’s a lie, scientific inquiry requires you to at least explore other assumptions.
Where is the peer reviewed scientific proof that human beings are flawed? Where’s the data? Where are the academic papers? Let’s see the math.
We don’t have it.”
Well, lies are deliberate, and asserting opinions is something entirely different. Proof, you say? That’s like asking for mathematical proof of the existence of God. There is no such animal. The proof is in the pudding, as it were; look around at the world today. What do we see? Mayhem, chaos, degradation, and trouble at every turn, etc.
I happen to agree with much of your commentary on Christianity and sin. But it is far from the only game in town. What about Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, and Islam? The Hindus, the founders of the oldest religion in the world and arguably the most precise, philosophically speaking, have a much different view of the universe than the Abrahamic religions. Consider that many Buddhist sects are openly atheists! And that many Hindu schools of Vedantic thought primarily involve self-reflection instead of musings about an all-powerful God.
So, I believe your view is very much informed by Western religious influences and current political events, such as White supremacy, racism, and, ultimately, unfettered Capitalism.
“We’re so conditioned to believe in the concept of sin, that we don’t stop to consider how that concept might be a plague upon the human race.” Quite right, in Western thinking, but an antiquated idea in other faiths, such as Vedanta (Hinduism), where beings are already part of the divine by their shared consciousness with what the sages describe in the later part of the Upanishads, called Brahman, a type of indescribable divinity that is beyond words. By the way, many modern pioneering scientists in the field of Quantum Physics happen to agree with those 5,000-year-old sages!
As noted, “Some prominent quantum physicists often cited as having views that align with Vedanta philosophy include Erwin Schrödinger, Max Planck, and to a lesser extent, Werner Heisenberg; all of whom expressed ideas about the interconnectedness of reality and the fundamental nature of consciousness, which resonate with Vedanta's concept of "Brahman" as the underlying unified reality.”
A bit more on Vedic thought: “In Hinduism, Brahman (Sanskrit: ब्रह्मन्; IAST: Brahman) connotes the highest universal principle, the Ultimate Reality of the universe. In major schools of Hindu philosophy, it is the non-physical, efficient, formal and final cause of all that exists. It is the pervasive, infinite, eternal truth, consciousness and bliss which does not change, yet is the cause of all changes. Brahman as a metaphysical concept refers to the single binding unity behind diversity in all that exists.” Wikipedia
More fundamentally, I still assert that my evolutionary flaw argument, which agrees with Kant’s and other’s assertions, however we are to understand them, is still very much in play. The issues of sin and Christianity are areas that are not germane to the argument of evolution, as evolution did not introduce the concepts of sin, saviors, deities, etc. Evolution does account for the problem of a caveman’s brain operating in a 21st-century man’s body and culture where nuclear weapons are prevalent and hot wars rage the world over. Not a good situation, and not because of some mistaken ideas about sin and Christianity, but because of man’s very nature.
The truth is, so often, painful.
Walter, Let us consider this from a different angle.
People are not and cannot be inherently flawed. So, we can agree that no person was ever, or ever will be, born in a flawed state. Can we agree that, for whatever reason, some humans' collective or societal actions cause terrible outcomes? We must agree to this as well. If we do, the question becomes, what causes this continual problem with many collective and personal decisions? Please note that I did not say all collective or personal choices, but some are decidedly very bad for the individual and humanity, no? Now, you assert that it is mainly education, which I largely agree with. However, I think our nature leads to many bad decisions for individuals and groups. It's not the whole story, but a significant portion.
Consider why humans have a fight-or-flight response or are much better at linear thinking than exponential thinking. To me, these lead back to how we developed or evolved. We could give simple mathematical problems to Applied Mathematics PhDs in linear versus exponential ways of looking at the world, and studies have shown that they make the same mistakes as the rest of us and repeatedly so. That isn't a lack of education but something much more profound. It can only be found by looking at our very nature and how we developed, or evolved.
Best,
Jeff
Interesting thoughts and a lot to address. I think one issue is this blur point where opinion is often offered as fact. People have settled into this concept of "human beings as flawed" so deeply that they act as if it's a fact even though they don't have the evidence for it. That applies as well to the argument about proof for god. We give lip service to the argument that there's no proof of god, and then the majority of people carry on with the assumption that god exists. It's very hard to achieve intellectual honesty, but until everyone is truly honest about the possibility that god might not exist or that human beings might not be flawed, they'll continue to build arguments based on those flawed foundations. Most of the time I have to get people to slow down. It takes a long time to accept the possibility that you might not be flawed. People tend to skip over that as if they can understand it just by reading the suggestion, but they can't. They really have to engage with that idea.