Clear Communication

A few years ago I finally had a chance to read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

I enjoyed the book immensely with the exception of a relatively large section given almost exclusively to discussion on the meaning of the word 'quality'.

I hadn't a lot of experience reading philosophy and felt this was a waste of time and resources in an otherwise interesting read.

Flash forward several years to the present and a discussion I was having with a friend which touched on religion. The friend made the claim that she wasn't religious, didn't quite believe in God, but subscribed to her own spirituality.

We discussed this point for a while where I was trying to understand what she meant by spirituality. Now spirituality is a fairly broad term, but once a person adopts the term regarding themselves, it becomes as important and specific a word to them as religion becomes to either a Catholic or a Muslim.

Comparatively I could make the statement that I subscribe to the life-concept of tree. We couldn't even begin to discuss this matter until I'd managed to properly communicate what I meant by life-concept of tree. This is made more difficult by me using words which have prescribed meaning in our language, but I'm obviously using them in a sense that is very personal and relevant only to myself.

My friend was either unwilling or unable to communicate the particular meaning she had ascribed to spirituality. It's also possible that I was the problem, just not getting it, or attempting to convert her meaning to terms more familiar to myself and failing.

It was at this moment that I understood what I had missed in my reading of Zen...Maintenance. The concept of Quality helps to build a core point in the book, but how does one properly communicate a point before making absolute sure that one's audience is completely understanding the definition of what is being discussed.

We do this so often in our lives, with large and small items. Find ourselves in discussions and disagreeing because we aren't properly defining what is being discussed. We don't take the time to communicate clearly. We have abandoned the idea of proper debate and replaced it with a single-minded attempt to make our own points and feelings known. On so many occasions half-way through a discussion i've had a flash of realization that I have been discussing something slightly different to the other person. The effect, at times, has been a complete reversal of stance on an issue.

We take so much of our own world view for granted that we overlook that others perspectives and definitions can differ, due to their own experiences. Conflicts in our lives, in our offices, in our homes and in our world tend to come from these minor misunderstandings more often than we care to admit.

I don't know how the conversation about spirituality, should we ever pick it up again, will end. But I now have a better idea of where it should start.

The Littling of God

For the record, I am a staunch Atheist. Please read this before continuing.

I would also like to say that I am not offended at all by whether or not someone chooses to believe in a God, but I am offended by How they Believe in God.

So, this isn't about the existence of God. This is about the current state of religious thinking that pits God against evolution, imploring believers to throw out one for the sake of Him.

I would like to present an argument that may comfortably allow Christians to still enjoy their faith in God without fear that evolution will bring down the pillars supporting that faith.


In the beginning...

God was a small god. He created the heavens and the earth. The heavens, essentially a curtain surrounding the earth, bore points of light which were stars and supported the sun and the moon. The whole device rotated around the earth, which at that time was nothing more than a small disc containing two or three large landmasses, some fairly decent sized islands, and a scattering of smaller ones.

At that time, god was little more than a parlor magician, who created everything from nothing - poof - hey presto. Upon completion, he felt it adequate to sit back and enjoy the worship owed to Him.

But science stepped in. And science, then as it is now, was considered a bane to organized religion and it's use was severely restricted.

What was missed, though, is how much larger science has made god.

First, new theories about the earths shape arose. It's a sphere said some. Blasphemy, cried the churches of the time.

But that theory made god a little bit larger. Not only did we exist on a larger world than we thought, but God must have pulled off a pretty neat trick to make everything stick to the outside of a sphere. That's a bigger, better God than the god that came before.

Then came theories regarding rotation of the earth. Travelling on it's orbit around the sun, the earth carves itself an area in space much larger than we previously thought. Heresy, shouted the churches.

Once again, God became just a little more marvelous.

With every expansion of our knowledge into the physical nature of the universe, or of our world and it's biology, heresy's became truths and God's creation became much larger, much more complex, and much more involved. And still with each revelation the religious leaders of the day attempted to suppress further developments. And yet still God grew.

Today we have a Universe that was arguably created by God. It is a very large universe. I don't think there is a single person on this planet that can conceive of how large it actually is. We just don't think in those terms. And yet, according to Biblical knowledge, neither did God. The universe He created was infinitesimally small in comparison.

So we still have religious leaders who want to relegate their God back to the status of Biblical times - the parlor magician god. (Poof - hey Presto).

But think now of the mechanism of evolution. The slow onset of the development of life. The minor changes and major leaps forward. The alterations, accumulated over time that resulted in the incredibly complex ecosystem we have now.

Now think of that process initiated by God. Possibly guided at times by His hand. A process requiring much more the efforts of an omnipotent being. It is more a testimony to the infinite patience, the infinite knowledge of a real GOD than merely waving his wand and having everything appear. If you want your god to be a GOD, isn't this the one more worthy, more deserving of your respect. Not the petty, contradictory, malevolent dictator found in the Bible.

The Bible is fallible. There isn't one Christian alive today who follows the letter, or even the full spirit of the law set down the Bible. It just isn't possible. At times it's downright contradictory, and in most modern cultures, elements are downright illegal. Christian minds are open to the idea that it requires editing for a proper Christian lifestyle. The Bible has been heavily influenced, during translation and interpretation, by those that wanted to keep God smaller than his potential. And it has not been nearly as successful in aggrandizing God to the degree that scientific study and development have managed.

Yet still, your religious leaders try to keep him small. Screaming blasphemy at those who continue to contradict their beliefs when history shows that every scientific leap doesn't diminish the breadth of God, but instead multiplies His abilities and accomplishments.

It's your choice Christians. You hold a belief in God as this incredible being, yet seek to limit his scope at every opportunity. And that to me is a poor choice in How to Believe in God.

I would like to hear from a believer in God on how the Theory of Evolution succeeds in limiting his vision of God.

No Apology Necessary

Consider the following scenarios:

Guy to guy:

"Hey man, you forgot to pick me up last night. I waited for two hours."
"Yeah dude. I'm really sorry. My bad. (insert reason for why he didn't show)."
...life goes on.

Guy to girlfriend/wife/fiance etc:

"Hey babe, you forgot to pick me up last night. I waited for two hours."
"(insert any other argument, related or unrelated, that she has a better chance of winning)."

I don't understand this phenomenon. As far as I can tell it's pretty much universal. Girls just don't like to say sorry - to boys that is. Most girls have shared a moment with one of her girlfriends, involving a couch, a box of kleenex and some quantity of alcohol and tearfully apologized for every perceived slight since the dawn of time itself. But not to us.

I freely admit that in discussions or arguments with my fiance, I am often wrong. I find myself the one offering the apology the VAST majority of the time. It used to cause me a lot of stress. Lost nights of sleep. Hours of my day attempting to figure out where I had gone wrong.

Then it hit me one day and I realized there were actually two solutions. It was my own little Eureka moment. It came, I have decided to believe, because my fiance overstepped her bounds. There's some sort of unwritten code that women follow that limits them to the amount of arguments they are allowed to win before we start to catch on. I was losing so many of them I started to ask myself the question: How could I be wrong so often? I mean I am not a genius, but in the rest of life's discussions I'm on more of a 50/50 split. What's going on in this relationship that causes me to be so misguided so much of the time?

And then came the proverbial two-by-four. Solution one actually followed solution two but I'll start there.

I realized that girls won't often enter a discussion if they think they might be in the wrong. They will avoid it like the plague. Any excuse will do and I have been privvy to some of the most creative, unrealistic bouts of logic twisting imaginable in order to put off, or ignore talking about 'somewhere they screwed up'.

But this of course is unfair, as I think the same can be said for boys. So let's just say Solution One is a human way of dealing with issues. It's just that women seem so much better at it. No matter how hard I try to avoid talking about an issue I don't want to discuss. My success rate is proportional to my success rate in arguments with my fiance which is to say...miserably low.

But Solution two is what I'm getting at here. Solution two is insidiously successful. Solution two, due to it's very nature, is so well disguised, I wouldn't have been surprised if I'd passed my whole life without figuring it out. Women don't like to merely participate in a discussion, there is this overwhelming need to win.

As an aside - I recognize the overwhelming need to win because it is inherent in myself. I like to win discussions/arguments/off-hand comments thrown out by strangers in the street/child raising issues (I have no children) - pretty much any kind of discourse. I like to win and I will participate in that discourse as long as the other player will allow me to, working on details until that Topic is outright won - by me. I really like to win.

The difference between my desire to win and her desire to win is that I'll stay on the topic of conversation. And as much as I like to win, I have found myself having to concede a point and even the argument, or wishing to retreat and give the concept a little more thought in order to better be able to WIN the next time. But it's all the same discussion/argument/discourse as where we started.

Here's the twist. The crux of Solution two. Aye, the rub: Women like to win arguments too...but it doesn't have to be on the topic which began the discussion.

That's it. Very simple. I finally realized that I usually ended up apologizing for something completely unrelated to the start of the conversation. Then I started paying attention to each conversation where I was clearly in the right. No mis-communications, no 'from a certain point of view', just clearly in the right. Suddenly we'd be somewhere else. The discussion would be guided into territory, sometimes familiar, more often unfamiliar but always on a completely different continent to where we just were.

It's sneaky, it's devious, it's nasty, it's underhanded, it's...it's...incredibly effective.

And all so they don't ever have to apologize.

How do they actually accomplish the switch? I have absolutely no idea. But pay attention boys, because the next time you find yourself thinking 'aha - i've got her on this one'... you will immediately start to notice a strange sinking feeling as your heart loosens itself from your chest and slides inexorably down to it's final, heavy resting place, somewhere within your bowels. You may even notice that it is tied in to the last statement uttered by the girl to whom you are talking. But you will never know how you got there, only that very soon it will once again be you uttering the words...'I'm sorry'

Non-belief is not a belief.

For the record, I am a staunch Atheist.

One of the frustrations I have in dealing with people of faith are their claims that my atheism is a belief as much as their faith is.

They are in error. It is not a question of belief, it's a question of non-belief. I concede that I have no proof that God is non-existent, in much the same way that followers of religion have no proof that God does exist and I am an Atheist because I think that in the absence of proof it is foolish to believe otherwise.

By way of example: with the absence of proof, who in their right mind believes in unicorns anymore?

The frustration increases when told I am unable to prove that god does not exist. This line of reasoning is distressing since the burden of proof does not fall to me. Instead it falls to the person making the statement of belief. If I were to believe that aliens in fact created life on earth, the burden of proof would fall to me to back up that theory rather than leave the onus on others to prove me wrong. As mentioned above, I have no belief, only the refusal to share in an unproven one.

There are no unicorns. There is no god. Prove me wrong.