A Sense Of Purpose

Christians often claim that atheists live in a meaningless universe and have no sense of purpose, because they have no afterlife to look forward to. I think they have it rather backwards - what purpose can a Christian have? It can't be to change heaven; heaven is perfect and in any case we have no knowledge of it to change it. It can't be to get other people into heaven; no just God would have another person fail to get to heaven because I didn't do something. And you're supposed to get into heaven yourself just by becoming Christian.

So what's a Christian's purpose? It's to make this world a better place to live, for whatever value of "better" they hold to. Nothing that an atheist can't share, in other words.

But there are other goals. Man faces a whole series of challenges in this blind, unfeeling universe. We must learn to live within the resources of this planet, before we turn it into a giant Easter Island. We must watch out for possible asteroid strikes. In a billion years or so, the earth will run out of the water that runs its cooling systems, and a runaway greenhouse will turn it into a boiling hell. Sometime later, the sun will expand and possibly swallow the remains - or if not, it will run out of fuel and leave a frozen rock. And the universe itself will run out of hydrogen for stars, and heat, and the hadrons that we are made of will decay, and even the black holes will evaporate, leaving an unimaginably cold, empty wasteland.

All of these things are hard problems. Most of them, religious people will tell you not to worry about; God will take care of it. The problem of keeping a stable population is one that many religions actively interfere with, either by telling people it's God's will that they have lots of children, or by banning any contraceptives that might actually work.

Some of them may not be solvable. Population stability is, if we care enough; asteroid strikes will be if we retain a technological civilization with enough spare resources to watch for them; running out of water is physically solvable but hard work. Moving to another star is extremely hard.

Surviving the heat death of the universe may be impossible. Today's physics says it is. It won't be solved in my lifetime; all we can do is make sure that humanity's children carry on a well-educated culture that has the capacity to look for solutions, instead of scrabbling in the dirt for survival. If it can't be done, I want our descendents to be able to say "we have looked everywhere". I want them to go not gently, with their eyes open; I don't want our last representatives to be huddled in caves praying for the sun-god to relent and stop baking them.

There may be other problems once that's solved; and that's what this universe is like, but that is also what we are like. You can tell how much hand-waving there is in here by the way I described keeping the planet habitable as solvable and moved on to harder problems.

This is a goal that an atheist can have. It's a real goal; it may or may not be possible, and the stakes are unmatched - the difference it will make in future is the very survival of our descendants.

Why do I care? Either way, I'll be dead. Well, I care because I'm human. Because that's the kind of creature that evolution produces - one that uses its faculties to project the survival of its kind. Those that don't care... die out. A Christian may tell me that I believe it's just chemicals interacting, and at an intellectual level I can see that, but it doesn't change who I am, just as sugar doesn't taste any less sweet when I understand the action of taste buds and the neural path connections.

I bet that Christians will share my purpose, too; as these problems become more immediate most will decide that God wants them solved by humans. Some nuts will decide that destruction is the will of God, and I wish our descendants luck with that. Planting the seeds of doubt - suggesting that God will leave us to our own devices - is all I can do to help.

Equal Opportunity

Having explained why I don't think much of the Bible, it makes sense I should also give the Koran a turn.

First, a disclaimer: I only read an English translation. Believers will say that the wonderful literary style of the Koran in Arabic is part of the proof of its divine inspiration, and that you haven't really read it until you've read it in Arabic.

Well, thanks to my time in high school studying various languages, I know that it would take me many years of hard study just to learn Arabic well enough to be confident I was reading it correctly, never mind appreciate the beautiful writing. And thanks to my time in high school studying various literary classics in English, I know that seventeen years full-time use of a language, reading books like it was my life's purpose, is not enough to guarantee that I will agree with the rest of you on what is "great literature".
So before I devote twenty years of my life to something that may turn out to be a waste of my time, I want some solid evidence. Sure there are a lot of Muslims; there are also a lot of Hindus, and a lot more Christians.

Potted summary: the Koran does not provide this.

I originally read it to see if it was as violent as they say, or as peaceful as they say ("they" being two different sets of people). I would have to read it some more, with cultural notes, to really be able to answer that properly. It seemed to me to me less violent than the OT, but more than the NT (at least in what it told people on earth do). The Koran never commands the extermination of entire groups of people, but there was a lot of use of the term "make wide slaughter", which disturbed me.

Parts of it were more sensible than I am used to in a religious text. Readers are told "you should do this, unless you can't afford to, in which case do this, or even this". Fasting is prescribed so that people can understand what it is like not to be able to eat when you want to. That I am surprised by a sensible religious text is an interesting commentary on religion, and probably also on me.

But the thing that struck me about it was how disorganized it was. The standard layout (if I understood correctly) is that all the Suras are in order of length. That's reasonable; I saw no better connections between them. They sounded exactly like what you would get if an intelligent preacher stood up and talked about whatever he'd been thinking about lately; lots of repetition of favorite themes, and no sense of completion or structure.

You could drastically shorten it all if you made up a new Sura detailing how the unbelievers and the wicked were in for a mighty chastisement, and the believers were going to paradise, and then read it before each of the rest.

I feel like an omnipotent god should be able to write literature that would sound inspired in any language - or else would provide the correct translation. After all, if reading the original really would convince people, He could pick up a huge swag of converts just with English and Mandarin.

Why can't the content sound inspired?

Symbolic Destruction

Every so often someone will start a push to outlaw burning the flag. This plays very well with some sections of the community, and it's very hard for a politician to stand up and say "I think it's OK to burn the flag".

I personally think burning a flag is a bad idea. It puts your fellow countrymen offside if it's your own flag, and just inflames things if it's someone else's. Think of when you see footage of it; the people doing it look hysterical, thuggish, or both. To burn your own flag, you are saying that your country is not as good as some other country - in which case once you've cleaned up the ash you should head over there. Or else you have some problem with humanity in general or countries or flags, in which case you should find a clearer way to make your point.

We've all heard the free speech arguments for not banning it, and I am firmly in the free-speech camp. You may find it offensive for someone to do that, but it's not hurting you (unless the particular piece of cloth being burned belongs to you, which is already covered by other laws).

You can argue that it is like yelling obscenities at a group of people - dangerous and stupid - in that it attacks (at least theoretically) everyone in the country. But I am proud to live in a country where we do not deal so violently with those who disagree with us. And when there is pointless violence in other countries, the flag-law types will be first in line to condemn it.

Which brings me to my second point. If you want to defend the flag from dishonor, flag-burning is not the thing you want to ban. What is it that makes the North Korean flag a symbol of dishonor? Is it people burning it in the streets (which I don't think I've ever seen), or is it the disgraceful actions of its rulers? What do you think when you see a flag burnt on TV? "Those people are hysterical/thugs/dangerous/traitors". And what flag is dishonored by it? Not the flag that they burn, but whatever flag they are waving as they scream abuse and threaten violence.

If we wish to defend the flag, we should make it the law that comitting a crime while prominently displaying or invoking the flag attracts an increased sentence. Let rioters think twice before pulling out a flag; let haters of all kinds find some other symbol for their bile. And let politicians hesitate before restorting to the the last refuge of the scoundrel; we will find out what you're hiding anyway, and we'll punish you harder for it.

One of my passport pages has this quote from Washington: "Let us raise a standard to which the wise and decent can repair". If we must punish anyone, let us punish those who make it a symbol for stupidity or criminality. If someone wants to burn such a symbol, the rest of us can draw our own conclusions without the need for judicial punishment.