The Parable of the Robot: More Musings on Meaning
There was were two robots, in two separate worlds. Both could feel, love, experience pain, heartache, joy. Both sensed honor and justice, good and evil. One was created by chance, by a machine. The other had been created by a human being, for the purpose of enjoying his fellowship.
The first robot made the best of what he had, and enjoyed the pleasures of life, seeking those circumstances which brought the most pleasurable feelings. He enjoyed his time with the other robots in his world, also made by chance and machine. Love and justice brought him a sense of fulfillment and pleasure, dishonor and hatred brought pain. Yet he knew that it was all just chance and machine. Thus he lived.
I am a robot, and my love and pain are the workings of a machine. My life is the operation of a mindless machine. Relationships between persons are the workings of a machine. The machine is fundamental.
The second robot lived much the same way, seeking to enjoy life, but he did so in the context of a relationship with his maker. Love and pain and justice and honor were not the chance productions of a machine, but the creations of his benefactor and friend. Thus he lived.
I am created by a person. I know this person. As I live and love, I have fellowship with him, and he with me. I am a person like him. My life is fundamentally a relationship between persons. Personality is fundamental.
Meursault’s Meaning, Camus’ Conundrum
I just finished listening to The Stranger by Camus. It has moved me a bit closer, I think, to clarity on this whole issue of meaning. The main character, Meursault, is clearly reduced to an animal by his philosophy. He lives only for the sensual, the immediate. How is this different from the animal, the beast?
This much is clear from the book. This does not match the analysis which followed. In interview with an “existentialism scholar” followed the book. He tried (in vain) to explain Camus ethic and his “positive” outlook on life, how Camus believed that the search for meaning was the problem, and that “life” is found in coming to grips with the absurdity of life. I still can’t grasp this. Sure, I can imagine living for today, for the feelings, but I cannot see how this is better than the alternative.
Strange, what Solomon wrote…
I said to myself concerning the sons of men, “God has surely tested them in order for them to see that they are but beasts (Eccl 3:18, NAS).
Thanks be To Science
I was thinking recently about all of the things I have to be grateful for, all of the things that the Lord Science has provided. Please join with me as we give thanks. After each prompt, respond by saying, “Thanks be to Science.”
For world peace, as promised…
Thanks be to Science.
For freedom from disease…
Thanks be to Science.
For freedom from crime, provided through scientific understanding of psychology and physiology,
Thanks be to Science.
For freedom from famine and hunger…
Thanks be to Science.
For freedom from all types of suffering…
Thanks be to Science.
For safety and security…
Thanks be to Science.
For the eradication of hatred and fear…
Thanks be to Science.
For freedom from poverty and want…
Thanks be to Science.
For the weapons of mass destruction…
Thanks be to Science.
For mechanization, which makes our lives easier so that we have more idle time…
Thanks be to Science.
For mechanization, which puts millions out of work…
Thanks be to Science.
For cell phones, which make us always on call…
Thanks be to Science.
For computers, which make our work so much easier…
Thanks be to Science.
For the internet, which brings so many wonderful things within our reach, things without which we would be lost…
Thanks be to Science.
For the internet, which has eliminated the need to interact with real people…
Thanks be to Science.
For YouTube…
Thanks be to Science.
For modern agriculture which, together with medicine, has enabled world population to grow into obscene crowding…
Thanks be to Science.
For modern medicine, which forces us to grow so old that we become a burden to our families and ourselves…
Thanks be to Science.
For technology, which has so increased the quality of our lives that we look back with horror on the “old days”…
Thanks be to Science.
For technology, which has made our lives so much simpler than they were back then…
Thanks be to Science.
For technology, which has freed us from real labor, sweat, working side by side with our family members and neighbors, and a good nights rest…
Thanks be to Science.
For technology, which has freed us from living close to the earth, in synchrony with the seasons…
Thanks be to Science.
For technology, which has freed us to spend our time in such pursuits as video games and other entertainment…
Thanks be to Science.
For technology, which has given us more time with our families…
Thanks be to Science.
For technology, which has enabled us to enjoy those parts of life that are most important…
Thanks be to Science.
For solving all of our interpersonal problems, saving our marriages, and strengthening our families…
Thanks be to Science.
For enhancing and enriching our friendships and all of our personal relationships…
Thanks be to Science.
For giving our lives meaning, purpose, and significance…
Thanks be to Science.
So Close I Could Almost Touch It
It’s one of the advantages of being a soil scientist. Sometimes, while I’m trudging around in the woods, finding the edge of wetlands, tying flags on the trees, I get a privileged view of nature.
It snowed this morning, and so I had a day off from school. I went out to check out a site so I could give my client an estimate. I made my way slowly through the snow-laden brush. The snow was sticky, and clung to the twigs and branches. As I pushed through, the ice cracked and snow stuck to my fleece. The nice thing about snow, though: my footsteps were quiet.
I followed a small brook, meandering at first through the pines, and then rushing more quickly over rocks as the gradient steepened. I turned away from the brook to avoid the dense undergrowth. As I came around the thicket, I caught site of a young deer. Seeing a deer at close range before it sees you is rare. Usually I see their rear ends only, white flag bouncing away with a snort. Or I’ll see them leaping away at a distance.
Today was different. She stopped. I stopped. I froze, cold aluminum auger slung over my shoulder, one foot still back, ball of my foot resting on the snow.
She turned toward me and stared right at me. I didn’t blink. She sniffed the air, hoping that a scent would give her a hint. Nothing. I stayed still. I studied the young doe, framed by a frozen white web of snowy branches, her deep black eyes, large black nose, her large ears twitching, straining to hear me, reaching out for a clue. What was I?
She stomped, lifting her front hoof slowly and then thrusting it quickly straight down into the snow. It made a soft thump in the snowy leaves. She moved her head, mechanically, stiffly, up and down, like the lever on one of those old water pumps, as if she were trying to get a better angle on me. She was not 25 feet away. She stomped again, then again with the other foot.
For a minute I was worried. Was she getting ready to rush at me? Could I get out the way in time? No, she won’t rush. She’s small. Maybe a buck would rush, but not her. I guesed that she was trying to scare me, get me to move. I stayed still, but could not restrain a smile. I grinned. She must have seen me grin. Perhaps she had never seen a smile before. Her right ear turned back toward the right, maybe to hear the young deer that walked slowy behind her.
My son and I must have gone out hunting 7 times this season, and never got this close. Now she was safe. Perhaps she knew.
She turned abruptly, she must have caught my scent, and she walked away slowly after two other deer. I walked slowly up to the spot where she had stood, and studied her tracks, snow pressed into translucent pointed shapes. There were lots of hoof prints where she had stomped. Tracks have always fascinated me: records left behind, imprinted on the earth. It was especially fascinating to study them so soon after they were made. Time becomes so real. The past. It’s strange.
It was a treat. So beautiful to see her so close. She was so marvelously made. More than chemistry. Surely more than chemistry.
More Thoughts About Evidence and Faith
It seems that I have fallen prey to a certain way of thinking about evidence for Christianity. This way of thinking says that if there is any evidence against some purported fact of Christianty, then that negative evidence cancels out the positive evidence. Let’s suppose, for example, that there is evidence for the existence of a certain city as described by the Bible. Will the presence of contrary evidence negate the positive evidence? Of course not.
To take another example, there is evidence for the resurrection of Christ, primarily the manuscript record. Now, if some scholars question the reliablity of the manuscripts or accounts, does this negate the positive evidence. Of course not. Rather, there is always this tension between positive and negative evidence. The same is true in science. Over time, one side may grow and overwhelm the other, and so certainty grows either for or against the proposition.
I can draw two potentially helpful conclusions from these observations. First, I tend to become immediately discouraged when I read any evidence against the Bible or Christianity. I see now that this is unnecessary. In fact it is to be expected, especially noting the everpresent possibility of alternative explanations. Secondly, it becomes clearer to me that faith cannot be based solely on external evidence. Instead, it must be based on an inner, subjective inclination or experience(s).
So we come ot the point. If I am outside looking in, if I am outside of faith looking in at the Christian world, how do I get there from here? Must I just wait for the subjective change? Or is there anything I can do. Words come to mind: seek, find, knock, open.
It’s cold and dark outside looking in at the bright warmth inside.
How do I knock?
A Student Philosopher, a Miracle
There are teenagers who care about more than video games and iPods. There are young people who think. There are young men who analyze the worldview they have been handed.
Today I was monitoring the detention hall after school. It is typically a place where one can observe the teen culture problem closely, but today was different. Today there was a young man in the hall who caught my eye first because he was reading a book with the word Nietzsche on the cover. Then, about half way through the period, he handed me a paper on which he had been writing and asked if I would read it. On it, he had written two paragraphs in which he stated that it was up to each individual to decide what was right or wrong. He wrote that each person should decide what he or she would believe, and then stick to it. Therefore, it is wrong, he explained, for one person to push his or her beliefs on another. I read it, and awkwardly handed it back to him, hesitant to comment in the enforced silence of the study hall.
I continued to grade papers. He continued to read and work on his handwritten essay. At the end of the detention, he handed the paper back to me. He had added some details about a hypthetical conversation between a Catholic and an atheist in which the two essentially cannot confront each other’s positions because the believe completely different things. I read it and then asked what he wanted me to do. He asked if I had any input. I was amazed. I took the paper back to my desk and sat down, eager to respond to his thoughts.
I wrote down some thoughts and questions related to the issue he had raised. He gratefully received it from me and asked if I would like to look at more of his writing. I was thrilled to say yes, I would love to. He explained that he had become interested in philosophy when his grandfather made him read a book by Soren Kierkegaard as a punishment. At first he recoiled at the thought of reading anything. It had been so long since he had read anything not required in by his classes. But by the end of his punishment, he was captured by philosophy. He began to read Nietzsche and other philosophers.
I told him I enjoy these things as well and he was welcome to come by my room anytime.
Here is living proof that my generalizations in my Extended Childhoodpost are just that, generalizations. Here is living proof that that teens have greater potential than we give them credit for. Here is proof that some teens, at least, struggle with the world we have made for them. And of course, here is evidence of what kind of world we have made for them.
At Heaven’s Gate: But You Didn’t Give Me Enough Evidence.
“But God,” I said “You didn’t give me enough evidence.”
“No?,” asked that solemn deity, “What do you mean by ‘evidence’?”
“You know, like proof, data, observations. I need hard evidence… things I can see, feel, smell.”
“I see,” said God, thoughtfully, “you needed to see me?”
“Not necessarily,” I replied, “I believe in atoms, though I cannot see them. There is evidence for gravity: every time I drop something it falls. There is evidence for the existence of black holes, at least I suppose there is. And of course I believe in evolution. After all, there are all of those fossils in the rocks, with teh simpler ones below the more complicated ones. But I need evidence that I can see. Like with evolution, I can see the fossils, and the explanation makes sense.”
“OK, so it can be indirect evidence?”
“I guess so.”
“And you are saying that there is no indirect evidence for Me? What about the Bible?”
“Yes, but that could all just be made up, contrivances of ancient deluded men or something.”
“Could scientists be wrong about evolution?”, He asked.
“I suppose so, though I can’t imagine it,” I answered.
God said, “So you don’t need absolute proof. There is evidence for Me, it is just not good enough for you.”
“I guess you could say that, or else there is just not enough.”
“OK so what would be good enough?”
“Well, If you appeared to me, or had spoken to me, that would have been helpful.”
“Oh, and you are sure you wouldn’t have questioned your sanity, or blamed it on some fluke of brain chemistry?”
“Maybe I would have. I don’t know, just make it obvious. For example, get rid of all of those fossils, they obscure you, and why couldn’t you have made it clear that the earth was only 5,000 years old. How about fossils tracing back to Adam and Eve in Mesopotamia, or a fossil Noah’s Ark? Or maybe … Egyptian records of the Exodus and the destruction of the army at the Red Sea, or maybe, oh, I don’t know…”, I faltered.
“It’s rather difficult, isn’t it?”
“What?”
“Coming up with evidences that you couldn’t explain away. Thinking of arguments that would not be ‘God-of-the-Gaps’ arguments, for instance.”
“I suppose so, I guess that is impossible, but I guess I didn’t need absolute proof. I just needed more.”
“How much more?” He asked.
“I don’t know,” I winced, “I can’t say.”
“Well then how can you say I didn’t give you enough? What is the standard for ‘enough’? It seems that the only standard is you and your own mind, or judgement, or perhaps your preconceptions, inclinations, whims, desires, or whatever it is that controls what you believe and don’t believe. In other words, the belief we are speaking of is subjective.”
“I guess you’re right.”
“So, what you mean to say is that I should’ve given you enough evidence to convince you, however much that was, but you cannot say if this would be possible.”
“I suppose so.”
“Who made you the standard, the judge of fairness and evidence?” inquired God.
“No one, but is it fair to require something of me that I cannot provide, or that I have not been equipped to produce?” I argued.
“No,” replied the Almighty, “but what if the fault is in you? What if you have hardened your own heart against Me, and against My Evidence? What if you are not convinced because your heart and mind have been distorted by your own rebellion against Me? What if, seeing that belief is subjective and based on intuitive judgement calls, your own decisions have so affected your mind and heart that you are unable to subjectively arrive at the appropriate conclusion, given the evidence.”
“I don’t know,” I sighed.
A Rude Awakening to a Cruel World
Listening to Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities today, I was struck by this line from the scene of Lucy and her father on the night before her wedding:
In the sad moonlight, she clasped him by the neck, and laid her face upon his breast, in the moonlight, which is always sad, as the light of the sun itself is, as the light of human life is at its coming and its going.
It reminded me of something I said on the event of the birth of my son, my first child.
My wife’s labor was long and difficult, and with only a narcotic to dull the pain. I did not deal well with my helplessness in the situation, my inability to help her. When my son emerged into the doctors arms, he placed him immediately on my wife’s chest. The crying baby, just after the cries of my laboring sweetheart, made a profound impression upon me, and I said “A rude awakening into a cruel world.”
The respected doctor quickly retorted, “A wonderful awakening into a wonderful world.”
I was a bit ashamed of myself after this correction, but I suppose that the mouth speaks what is in the heart. I think this illustrates two strongly contrasting worldviews: one sees the world as full of pain and trouble, the other, as rosy and wonderful. I suppose that I have always been of the former persuasion, and perhaps I am in good company.
Dickens may be taking my pesssimistic platitude even a bit further by pointing out that human life is “bookended” by pain. What more should we expect, he may be implying, from the middle parts?
“Man is born to trouble,” said Eliphaz to Job, “as surely as sparks fly upward.”
Of course, there is joy in life, and wonder, at times filling life and crowding out the pain. But it is certain that pain is woven pervasively and intimately into the fabric of life.
But there is also joy in the midst of pain.
And why did Solomon say, “Sorrow is better than laughter…”?
