In 1948 the famous Harvard psychologist B.F. Skinner did a test on some pigeons (poor things). He kept the pigeons in a box and with a button they could operate a mechanism that provided food. So, not surprisinlgy, the pigeons learned how the system worked: ‘push button, get food’. Lesson: pigeons are capable of learning, no news there. but then Skinner took this test to a different level.

B.F. Skinner

Pigeonrituals

These pigeons did not have the intellectual capabilities of actually understanding what happened when they pushed the button; this button that gave off an electrical signal that set some mechanical device in motion thet released food into the box (or something like that). As far as the pigeons were concerned, this could all just have been magic. What Skinner did, was randomize the dispensing of food in the box. At completely random moments, without any sort of button or switch the pigeons would get food in the box. Skinner then saw that the pigeons started developping all sorts of rituals that -in their minds- preceded getting food. Some pigeons started doing elaborate dances (not unlike a raindance I’d imagine) other started pecking the walls of the box. All of this in anticipation of food, which eventually came. As far as the pigeons were concerned: their rituals worked.

Randomness

The key in this experiment is not the proof that pigeons apparently may learn to operate a button, but are incapable of understanding the mechanism behind a switch; it is that pigeons developped some sort of religious rituals that they believe worked, since they could not grasp the concept of randomness. And, my fellow human beings, neither can we. It is a well known saying that ‘the way to predict the future is to study the past’. But this is also a great misconception.

Pigeons

Divine intervention

If you look back on past random events, our human minds operates in a way that will start seeing patterns, even if they’re not there. Sure, we understand the randomness of the outcome of throwing a pair of dice, but not the randomness in the failure of the crops. For that; there must be a reason. And, if we cannot find this reason; than that must be a case of divine intervention, right? There must be a reason why food drops down your box and the reason is ‘I did this dance’ and if your dance wasn;t followed by food, than you must have done something wrong. And that might just be how religion is born. Religion might just be a way of understanding this very randomised world around us.

Photocredit: Pigeons photo from Melody McFarlands blog.

I guess it has something to do with getting or older or something, but I find I’m having more and more discussions with friends about ‘why we are here’? (I do believe that psychologists divide several ‘personality development phases’ in human life and somewhere around thirty there is this ‘re-evaluation of values’ phase. Perhaps this is it…) To be clear, these are not discussions about the (non-) existence of a god, but about our purpose on earth. If you believe that there is a personal god, that does not give you a purpose for being here, it merely provides you with an answer about how you got here. Which is not the same thing.

Religious people however, usually have an answer to the big ‘why’question. We’re here to take care of god’s great earth. God, at the same time, has to watch of all of us to see how we do it. To me that doesn’t make sense. If there is an almighty god, why wouldn’t he/she/it manage the earth him/her/itself and cut out the middle men? If you want something done right you’ve got to do it yourself anyway and just think of all the profits you save…

But seriously. People tend to have a real problem with the idea that there might not be a reason for our existence in life. They confuse ‘reason’ with ‘value’; if our existence has no reason, it must be worthless. That, to me, seems to be utter nonsense. A rollercoaster ride has no purpose. But it most definitely has value. Thousands of people have good jobs in the ‘rollercoaster-industry’. Actually, the rollercoaster analogy is not a bad one at all. I think that are some pretty good similarities between a rollercoaster ride and a philosophy of life, besides both being useless but valuable.

In both cases, when you prepare yourself well at the start and develeop a strategy that suits you, you will enjoy the ride more. Furthermore; it is considered ‘bad manners’ to annoy other people that are enjoying their ride. Terminating other passengers’ ride, is criminal. The more poetic types amongst us would say that both life and ride go through several loops, falls and rises, around sharp bends and can turn you upside down. I myself find this bit of the analogy a bit weak, but still… there you have it. Quantum theory suggests that spacetime has no beginning nor an end. Instead, when you get to ‘the end’ you’re actually at ‘the beginning’, just like on earth the most eastern point you can ever reach is also the most western point (darn those circles). So without ever turning aruond a journey in one direction, as long as you travel far enough, will bring you back to where you came from. Such is also the case with a rollercoaster ride.

Life is beautiful. Even thought it might not be useful in ways we can think of with our human minds. Just ‘being’ might just be enough. Live and let live.

Travelling from home to work takes me about an hour. Since I am a smart person, I don’t commute by car, but I take the comfortable, quick and reliable train. Add all those ingredients together and you get a good recipe for ‘time to read and think’. I usually get my best ideas in the morning, when I’m not yet fully awake. Sometimes I just ponder about trivialities or ‘deep philosophical questions’… Anyway, this morning I was thinking about the following:

“Most people think it is very funny and naive when certain cultural groups believe they can bring the rain upon performing a rain-dance. Or they can have a successful harvesting when offering rice to a stone-statue. Or they can have a male child when they run around an old oak-tree in their naked bum when the moon is full.
However; we tend to take people seriously that believe they can improve the health of an ill person they do not know by praying to a personal god that listens to all prayers and acts upon them. They believe so, even when all scientific research ever conducted has proved that this has no effect at all (not for the ill person anyway).”

So, why do we take one, erm… ‘outlook on eternity’ seriously and make fun of others? And not even the people that are deeply religious themselves, but so called non-believers or ‘infidels‘ as well. Why do we have more respect for -say- ‘christians’ than for people who claim to believe in the flying spaghetti monster? (there is no doubt in my mind that there are some Pastafarians that take their religion seriously by now… otherwise; how did scientology start?).

And if we agree that we should treat all religions alike, no matter how obscure, should we take all religions seriously or should we all make fun of one another? ‘Making fun’ would get my vote. If, however extraordinarily unlikely, there should be a god ‘up there’ somewhere, I am sure he/she/it has a great sense of humour (again: How else can you explain Scientology?).

• Is beer better than a sausage role?
• Where are my keys?
• Money is a more objective standard for measuring than ‘happiness’. Does that mean it is a better standard for expressing wealth?
• How many animals can you kill to save one human life?
• Are objective standards better than subjective ones?
• Can you drink through your nose?
• How many ugly animals can you kill to save one cute and cudly baby seal?
• Do things that take no effort worthless?
• What was the last time you laughed uncontrollably?
• Would you kill?
• Is ‘extremly bad’ worse than ‘extremely average’?
• When is something extremely average?
• Art or religion?
• What’s the use of answers that do not lead to new questions?
• What would nothing be like?
• Does the idea of people having sex shock you?
• What is your IP?

Once in every while you see a painting and you know in an instant; the artist just loves paint. Give ‘em half a chance and they would have paint for breakfast. In this particular case I saw paintings by a young Dutch painter (undoubtedly heading for greatness…), Aaron van Erp (1978). He stands out, not only because of the way the brushes the paint on the canvas (which makes the artlover really hungry for more) but also because of his choice of subjects. Seemingly everyday scenes turn out to be quite bizarre and… ‘funny’. Which isn’t a bad thing considering the subjects..

Aaron van Erps works are part of the collection of no less than Charles Saatchi and this December he will have a soloshow in the citymuseum of The Hague (something I’ll definitely be going to). What is it that is so appealing about paintings with titles like ‘Terrorist with corpse and shopping cart’ (thumbnail to the left), ‘PSV man with decapitated chicken’? As van Erp puts it himself: “it’s possible to laugh about horrible things”. Some of his subject are horrible, they could have given Francis Bacon nightmares. But at first glance, they don’t seem horrible.

With the title and with van Erps seemingly naive way of painting it takes the initial effect of horror away. And that’s a good thing, effect-wise. In my previous post I wrote about the works of Kendrick Mar. A parallel between his and van Erps work is that they both may have seen the (actually quite dreadful) film ‘The devil’s advocate’. At one point Al Pacino, playing the devil, says to his protegee, Keanu Reeves; “what makes me so good is that they never see me coming”. Van Erps and Mars works do exactly that. You get drawn in by a cute and appealing iconic figure (Mar) or a beautifully, lushly painted, slight bizarre scenery (van Erp). Then you look further and the sadness or even horror, strikes you with double force: “what the hell am I looking at!?” Right after that, appreciation sets in. Or, perhaps, even admiration. Isn’t it fantastic that a painter can do all that with an image?

Dear prof. Dawkins,

I have really enjoyed reading your book ‘The God Delusion’. The way you have argued that it is both highly unklikely as highly undesirable that a personal God exists, is very convincing. Not suprisingly, the main ammunition you use to shoot holes in religion comes from the theory of evolution. Also, as to be expected, a lot of your attention is directed towards one of the most religious western countries: the USA. It appears that you think religion, or: believing in a supreme being, is a bad thing for the USA, the most powerful nation in the world, as well as for the rest of the free world. I think it is not and I would like to explain why.

You may have heard the stories, which may well be urban legends, about a man who put his wet cat in a microwave oven to ‘dry it off’ and got a lot of financial compensation from the manufacturer because they did not state in the manual that a microwave oven was not intended for such use. Or a woman who got financial compensation from a fast food chain because she pilledtheir hot tea over her leg which hurt quite a lot. I also heard of a traveller that slipped on a wet floor at an airport, broke a leg, then sued the airport and is now a millionaire. There are a lot of these stories around, undoubtedly some of them are true. The basic idea of alle these financial compensation stories seems to be: stupidity pays. Not everyone that sues for financiel compensation is stupid ofcourse, but a lot of times… stupid people get rewarded.

I think you can, quite roughly, describe ‘evolution’ as; the traits of a species that are most benificial to this species will be passed on and amplified to future generations of this species. Should that indead be the case, and if we can assume that on the basis of the above examples we may conclude that it can be very benificial to be stupid, would the theory of evolution not say that we, Westerners, get more stupid with every generation? This cannot be true, can it? (Please note that it is not my opinion that everyone in free world countries are stupid, I am merely pointing out that it seems stupidity -like putting your pet in a microwave oven- is rewarded and therefor is a desirable trait. ).

If there is a God up on the skies looking down on us, personally creating each and every individual and granting parents the honour of having this Godmade person born into their families, we would not be getting more and more stupid at all. There could be a divinely set level of stupidity/intelligence. You also wrote about cases where a placebo can have as much effect as the actual medcine. So, suppose that the evolution theory is true and there is in fact, no God. Could we then, perhaps, let our religious brothers and sisters believe that there is a God after all? If only for their sake? For their mental health? Their self esteem? How do you think they would feel if we found out that with any passing generation we are getting dumber, all because of Charles Darwin.

I hope, with this short message I will have helped in making you see the light. If you do insist on providing clear scientific evidence there the can be no God, it might very well be that you get sued by a believer.

Sincerely yours.

I guess a lot of people, at one time, once thought “what’s the point to it all?”. I mean, to me that just goes to prove that you’re a normal, intelligent human being. You get aware of the fact that you’re just an incredibly tiny speck in this big universe, living for merely a micromoment in eternity. And if you think about how amazingly unimportant your entire existence seems to be… how much of a big deal should you make out of being on time for that appointment? Or trying your best at that assignment your boss or your teacher gave you? What does it all matter? Some people might think that those questions are just residue from puberty, but I don’t think so. I think it is a good thing to relativate your role in the grand scheme of things. Which is an entirely different thing than getting ‘bummed out’ by it and decide to not bother with anything ever again because.. “well, there’s no point, is there?”.

There is another reason to try your best at something than because it is ‘important’. And by that I do not mean anything religious; the whole idea of the existence of a personal God seems completely inplausible to me. What I mean is; trying your best is good for yourself. If you look around you, you only see things that are constantly developping. Plants grow stronger, animals learn, and -it seems- even the universe itself is still growing. And on a timescale larger than our lifetime; changing and evolving is the very heart or existence,reproduction and evolution itself.

I guess it could very well be that there is, in fact, no point to our existence. Then again; there is no point to a rollercoaster either. Which does not mean that it isn’t fun. It gets even more fun when you go for it with the right attitude; hands up in the air, screaming and not throwing up on any of the other people who just want to enjoy their ride as well. And as for the ultimate question about ‘why do we exist’, I’m sure there’s a reason, not so sure that there’s a purpose but it shouldn’t change your attitude in life. Just be the best you can, don’t bother others and leave the rollercoaster a bit cleaner than it wsa when you got in. (how soppy is that?)