An Elephant in a Dark Room

"Does the person in this photo look like a sinner to you? If it does, then I believe that you have a problem…." (Ridgewalker 2008)

Having just finished the epic and groundbreaking series, “The Ascent of Man” (1973)…the legacy of the brilliant mathematician and scientist, Jacob Bronowski, I feel the need to write; not so much about the series, but about conclusions and connections that I had made along the way. (Yes, in my March 12th entry, here, I totally pilfered one of his episodes and tried to camouflage the deed with some pictures, some humor, some irony…all failed, unless everyone who read it was thoroughly familiar with Bronowski’s work and, thus, didn’t want to embarrass me. Thanks…I guess….)

Bronowski wrote in his 1951 book "The Commonsense of Science" : "It has been one of the most destructive modern prejudices that art and science are different and somehow incompatible interests".

For comparative purposes, I would like to take the license of adding religion into the equation, baring in mind that I am interested in ascertaining relevance in Man’s evolution forward. What I’m not referring to is the ascension from ape-to-man, or fish-to-man. That’s only one possible line of thought. What I am referring to is Man’s evolution in terms of his understanding of the Universe .

Several times during this body of work, Bronowski refers back to the still nomadic Bakhtiari tribes of Iran and the way that children were not exposed the options of creativity, exploration, or any of the billion options that life has to offer. A child would become a goat-herder, just like his father. His father’s father was a goat-herder…as was his father and his father and his father. I think you get the point.

For eons, the Bakhtiari travelled from point A, to point B and back to point A with their goats. It was a perilous journey, however, having to ford powerful rivers and cross snow-capped peaks, barefoot. The point, here, is that everyday was the same, without variation and this added up to a lifetime in which there was little difference between a Bakhtiari’s life, at any given point in time, and that of one of his ancestors, 1000 years before. These people did not ascend…they did not evolve, but they did survive by going around and around…locked in the revolving door of their existence.

A prime example of this occurs at the Karun River, where a rite of passage takes place. The Karun is a cold, swift river and a boy becomes a man when he can cross the Karun on his own. Those that fail, do so with dire consequences. And when a man becomes too old to cross the Karun, he is left behind on the banks to die…alone.

Other cultures…ones that sought variation and creativity and freedom of thought would not have evolved such rituals. They would have actually conceived of and acted on the need to do something like...building a bridge, perhaps? What a novel idea! With the Bakhtiari, there was no room for the kind of personal growth that may have led to bridge-building. To them, there was only one way to do things: the way it had been done before.

I’m not judging their way of life. This is just the way it is. While the rest of Mankind was ascending and evolving and gaining a broader understanding of the world, they were not.

Science and Art are more playful. While the Bakhtiari are absolute in their perception of the world, Science and Art have proven themselves to be ridiculously flexible, by comparison. They encourage exploration. They encourage failure. This is not to say that much Science and Art have not been suppressed and even burned throughout the millennia.

Enter religion.

Science and Art…Science, in particular, has given Mankind its greatest range of knowledge in the understanding of the Universe. For the better part of its existence, Art has been controlled by religion and power, with its sole purpose being to focus peoples’ attention back into religion, in an attempt to explain and enforce the yet unexplainable. It couldn't quite contain the scope of Science, however. There is to this day, a futile struggle between Science and Religion (but not between Science and Faith) as if one is better or more important than the other. Scientists have a great deal of faith.

One argument against Science is that Science cannot prove how everything was created; that such diversity cannot be an accident...could not have risen from chaos. Well, this is a loaded assertion. First, Science doesn’t have the reach necessary to answer questions like this (no "yet" is implied). But, scientists know this and that an assertion like this is baseless. They have just begun exploring. Not having the answer to "Everything" is not a bad thing and nothing to be ashamed of, nor should it require a defensible position. Millions of books have been written on scientific subjects, but there is no one book of absolutes…no one book with all of the answers. A bibliophile, who has made a career out of reading the bible, feels superior to someone who actually works at learning and admits to not having all of the answers. But, they insist that if someone were to give up their belief in what science has to offer and start reading the bible, they WILL find ALL of their answers, which I think is ludicrous.

As cultures evolved and Man’s contributions mounted, nomads like the Bakhtiari assimilated into more attractive situations. Creating a surplus of agricultural products was one of the first major advancements to lure people out of nomadic lifestyles. Housing. Craftsmen. Irrigation. Herders could now choose from an array of trades and professions. Creativity exploded. Bridges were built. Places of study were established. Libraries. Universities. There was no way to snuff out Man’s burning desire to know more.

But there was a force that tried…a force that has always wanted to skip the learning process, get right to the end of knowledge where there is nothing else to learn, except for reading the same book over and over and over, until they were good enough to quote passages because they didn’t have what it took to be a real expert at anything else. This force claims to know everything that there is to know and nothing else needs to be known. Since Man cannot prove where all things came from and does not yet understand all that needs to be understood, Religion has offered an answer: God did it. Period. And all else is irrelevant, or at best, lesser, inferior. How does a person justify this? They believe it and it is “written” in a book, is the usual answer. Of course, there are varying degrees of intensity of “Thou shall not question”, here.

I believe that having faith in something is important to Man’s evolution. Rituals create communities, which brings ideas together. Being closer together makes people stronger and safer. Together, people can do more than they can alone. The Bakhtiari are a counter-example of this. (I’m sure that some Bakhtiari eventually became great architects.) Praying to a God…whether this is a way of summoning to his ones own conscience, or whether there really is One Guy who made all of this occur, is good in that it allows a person to search…it can guide a person to doing the right things. But, when the fear factor is introduced and a person is cajoled into believing that Man has evolved so far as to have attained an absolute answer to life, disregarding any other possibilities, found, or not yet found, is arrogant and sad and hordes of humanity have been corralled into believing that they are unworthy sinners.

Einstein did not disregard the possibility of the existence of a God, but this did not dissuade him from exploring all of the other possibilities. He was in awe of the unexplainable and agreed that creating a God in Man’s image was dangerous, yet effective.

"If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed."

Einstein did not believe that a prayer could influence the events of the Universe. "I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal." (Einstein, 1954) Note that Albert does not force his opinion down the throat of the reader. He states, very clearly, that these are only his opinions and not facts, even though a single bible would sit in the shadows of tomes of scientific literature filled with facts and data. I'm sure Albert would accept anything that could be proven.

Personally, I have always had a problem with the concept of a Big Guy waving a wand and making all of this occur. I have also had a hard time believing that all of this was made so by a Big Bang. As far as we know, there may be Big Bangs occurring every five minutes somewhere beyond the scope of our reach that are part of the cycle of life where things are destroyed and things are created. Science explores the Big Bang because this is the limit of its expanding knowledge. Do I have a hard time believing, or acknowledging that what we see is the result of an explosion? Not at all. The killer, here, is the time factor, which, like unimaginable distances is…well…unimaginable. We can’t wrap our heads around the kinds of things that take 3000 million years to happen. Not having the ability to grasp this should not give Passage Pushers free reigns to disregard the monumental contributions of his fellow men. The Big Bang is a theory. God is an feeling and an assumption until its presence can be proved...which I don't believe will be anytime soon. I'm okay with that. One is based on a series of facts and probabilities that lead to a logical conclusion. The later cannot offer any proof other than “It's true because I believe”. A lot of good that does anyone else.

I guess the thing that gets to me, and always will, is the fear factor that is infused into religion. As an army, The Church was effective. They wanted to exert control, en masse, and it worked. It, first, had to establish itself as an authority, so it created the “you’re an unworthy sinner from birth-to-death” mentality and forced people to pay homage their whole life under the threat of eternal damnation. This, I more than believe, is a man-made concept. 'Oh…you won’t pay homage? Well, God wants ME to show YOU what you have to look forward to in Hell for not believing and not living your life in fear. People being burned alive. Impaled. Crucifixions as far as the eye can see. Torture. Persecution. Ethnic cleansing. Witch hunts. This is YOU for eternity AFTER you die'. This is beyond arrogant. It’s insidious and limits the reach of its victims.

This is the foundation that The Church was built on. None of it…neither the ultimate rewards, or the ultimate punishments can be proved…not to this day. Not because it says so in the bible.

Then again, whether any of this is true or not…it can’t be disproved, either…which means that no absolutes have yet been discovered. I can live with that. What I can’t handle is one person out of the 6.5 billion people on this Earth telling me that THEY are the one with THE ANSWER…because they read it in a book…posting on the Internet as if they were talking to their own imaginary congregation because everyone in their real life is bored, sick of listening to them, or readily agrees with them and they're unsatisfied with the lack of resistance, which they need so they can swing their swords and, of course, it gives them another opportunity to puff-up their chests and quote from more passages. These proselytizers and Passage Pushers are the broken-records-of-humanity. I'm pretty sure that they are working hard at convincing themselves that they are strong enough and powerful enough to actually bare the weight of faith in an attempt to destroy other peoples’ faiths, as were any number of fascists who had what it took to actually wield power over other people. Some of these Passage Pushers are very aggressive in their assault, swinging their cyber sword as if they were conducting another crusade, while others are more passive/aggressive about it. Can't always see these guys coming. Make no mistake about it...they are judging you as if they were God, themselves, while telling you that only God can...ah...forgetaboutit. What's the point? If you're afraid of live...you're afraid of life...

They all fell for the oldest trick in The Book.

I always proofread my work aloud, so that Stark can get her licks in. She came back with the “Elephant in a Dark Room” scenario: A group of people are put in a pitch, dark room, encircling an elephant, not knowing that it is an elephant. Each is instructed to reach out and describe what they feel. Each person describes something unique…their own version of what they experience. They are, of course, each describing a part of the exact same thing…something that they cannot understand the full scope of. A Passage Pusher will interpret what they describe as an absolute…that THIS is what it is. The scientist will describe what they experience and be driven to know what the part that they touched is connected to. They both serve a purpose, I guess, although one moves humanity forward, while the other does not.

Either way, what each are experiencing is profound and amazing. This is where I think everyone should agree: that Life is profound and amazing. The wrench in the works are those who insist on stopping at an absolute and being satisfied that there is nothing more…that we don’t need to know anything more. This is what it is and: There. Is. Nothing. More. I don't think I would have been happy in Midieval times.

Do I have faith? I do…in many things, but I’m not going to spend a minute of my precious time on Earth attempting to break someone else down by trying to shovel what I believe down peoples’ throats. If someone wanted to engage anyone in a discussion of their core beliefs, why in the world would they use such a monotonous, repetitious, uncreative, boring and oppressive approach?

Lastly, I believe that there is good and bad in all Science, Art and Religion. All are guilty of trying and quite often are successful at blowing toxic smoke in our faces. In some areas it is epidemic. This can all be traced back to bad people with bad intentions with ulterior motives.

I had to get this off my chest…once…

I'm sure that I'm not right about everything, as no one is, so can we all please meet in the middle and agree that the child in the picture is not a sinner, any more than I am a saint?