Friday, March 26, 2010

Suffering Honesty

A child breaks his mother's vase. The mother tells the child to become honest and asks the child. The child admits to his fault. The mother scolds the child. The child gets scarred for life.

This is a typical scenario in almost every household - no doubts about that. But as the child grows up, the negative reinforcement had already made a mark in his mind that honesty would yield bad outcomes. As a result, the child lies to escape punishment.

In the world today, there is no such thing as an "honest politician". People have to lie to get on with their lives because of this. Honesty doesn't yield anything other than suffering. An honest person is always the martyr.

Friday, March 5, 2010

Chaotic Universe

Theists usually say that explosions do not create order, referring to the Big Bang theory. Atheists counter the statement by stating an example of an explosion that creates order. But before anything else, what is order? What is chaos?

Say a child was brought up in an environment filled with love and care; he will perceive the world as a harmonious one with positive aspects. As for a child brought up using violence and punishment, his way of living would revolve around violence and punishment. He will perceive any violent act as a natural thing to do.

Humans are born in this universe and assimilated themselves into it, seeing beauty in its asymmetry. But is this really "order"? What kind of order is this, anyway? Total order would only be total absence of existence, which isn't the case of this universe. There is too much variation and conflict. Humans are no different from molds growing on stale bread; the molds grow and thrive on something that can exist peacefully without it.

What if this is actually "chaos"? No. This universe is indeed chaotic. Humans are chaotic beings living in a chaotic universe, thus their senses have been accustomed to this chaos and interpret it as "order". Mix in some awareness and you'll get conceit that this order is specifically made for them.

Some people think that the night sky is beautiful. Some see beauty in the rings of Saturn. Some, in death, blood, and gore. But looking at it from an extraterrestrial perspective - no, an extra-universal perspective, everything in this universe would seem pretty ugly. Humans just pick out what they think is orderly and beautiful according to their preference. That alone makes the definition of "order" pretty vague and ironically, pretty chaotic.

The theists are right for once. Explosions, indeed, do not create order.