Experiment in Secularism
EXPERIMENT IN SECULARISM
Day 1
Today I began an experiment in secularism. My hope is that the experiment may allow me to give a truthful response to some questions I was asked about my views and beliefs. The experiment may have other benefits I don't yet see.
The experiment began deliberately today by dwelling on the following thought:
"Suppose that there really is no eternal world. Suppose that time and space are all that exist. Does everything make more sense? Do I feel more free?"
Today as I spent my first hours under the proposed supposition, I asked myself many questions:
WHY NOT CHANGE MY LIFE? WHY NOT TAKE IT?
Why am I living as I now live? Why don't I leave my family and go live as a hermit in the woods? Would I be lonely and depressed in the woods? If I would be lonely and depressed in the woods, why is that so? It must be a trick of my genes to propagate themselves.
Yes, a trick of my genes. They want me to think I feel connectedness and love, and they counterfeit noble emotions in me to keep me in the action where I can nurture my wife and children and help the poor in Africa. But I refuse to be the stooge of my genes.
My genes have made me too intelligent. By enabling me to ponder them they have left themselves vulnerable, because they are at my mercy. Why should I play this part? Why not end my life? I would rather end my life than live in the service of irrational urges that serve nothing but some strands of acid.
It occurred to me that if I left my family, I would cause them to suffer, and that pains me. My children would miss me and my wife would be forced to labor. But why should I care? My love for them is only a trick of my genes foisted upon me to preserve their irrational continuation.
I am angry at my genes. But I am my genes. Then so be it; I am angry at myself. But no! I am not my genes. I have transcended them. But I speak as a fool. My genes are all there is, and if by a freak coincidence I and my brother human apes have transcended them, what meaning could that possibly add to the whole mess? And what does transcend mean anyway?
Transcendence, love, genes, humbug! What do I care? It is all a trick, and the universe cares not whether I or anybody else lives or dies. I must search for meaning somewhere, if it is to be found. But no! It is a trap! There is no meaning. There is only coincidence.
WHAT MUST I DO WITH SUPPOSED ANOMALIES?
My memory holds models that are inconsistent with the secular reality:
- There is a transcendent eternal world that thousands of people ancient and modern have seen.
- There is a God in heaven who hears and answers my prayers.
- Humans accomplish supernatural feats by connecting with the eternal world.
Within those models are numerous facts:
- 5% of the U.S. population has had near death experiences.
- Howard Storm's NDE has elements similar to Lehi's and Alma's visions in the Book of Mormon.
- I feel God's love.
- Joseph Smith wrote about Lehi's journey in a way that is uncannily faithful to Arabian geography, place names, and trade routes.
- Joseph Smith's word of wisdom revelation is dietetically sound and could save the church and the world from many diseases if followed.
- Near death experiencers say their experiences are more real than life. And most of them see life radically different after their experiences.
- Some near death experiencers were clinically dead for a long time or saw physical things while their bodies were in coma.
I have two choices regarding my anomalous models. I can either ignore them or I can explain them in a way that makes sense to me.
To tell the truth, after several hours of secularism, I am starting to see things differently, and I really am not all that interested in those anomalies. In other words, I am not really inclined to go to the trouble of explaining them, as they are beginning to look rather weak to me in the first place. Why do I really care about such fantasies anyway?
So do I just ignore them? I will have to think about it. And when I am fresh I will write some more. It might be fun to explain them after all. And maybe some more experienced secular thinkers can help me. Hmm. Good thinking.
Regardless of my disposition, I must deconstruct in satisfactory detail at least one of the models. If I fail to do so and end this experiment with the weak, faulty models in place, I will be doing myself a dishonesty. I must find satisfying alternate perspectives if I can.
I fear I am discovering a weakness in this experiment. Under the suppositions of the experiment, I am not able to properly formulate strong evidence in support of anomalous models. I can conceive of the possibility, once the experiment has ended, of being agile enough to flip perspectives at will. And that makes me wonder if the only value of the experiment is to show myself fearless. And what use is that?
If the only value of this experiment is to show myself fearless, have I failed? Have I been dishonest and self-serving? There must be other value that I am forgetting. Hmm. If the only value is to show myself TO MYSELF as fearless, the experiment is not in vain. But no! I must not conclude the experiment while I am yet starting it. The value is unknown and must remain unknown. All I must know is that I am supposing there is only space and time. I must not consider motives. I must only consider the supposition, and go from there.
If I am unable to "properly formulate strong evidence in support of anomalous models", I may need to resort to talking to a believer to get such perspectives. In such a case I would be playing an extended, sincere, and disclosed version of the Devil's Advocate. But never mind. I am under no obligation other than to live with the supposition until I pronounce the experiment finished.
Why do I call clouds in a blue sky beautiful? Why do tears come to my eyes when I gaze on them?
Perhaps they remind me of something. Perhaps they stir my deepest value. What do they remind me of? Freedom? Beauty? No, not beauty. Beauty can't be real. There is only pacification.
Ah, yes. Clouds stir me to tears because my genes would have me pacified in the face of adversity in order that I fight the good fight for the gene pool. Then it is only a deception. The genes would have those things that are most common and certainly available to every human appear the most rejuvenating to the drives.
OK. So my genes want me pacified and therefore they simulate beauty. Fine. But I want freedom. I don't want to be a slave to the genes.
Oh, what foolish talk! I am the genes; there is nothing else. And if there is nothing else, why should I strive and suffer? Why should I toil and labor? Why should I care? I prefer to die. I prefer to die.
There is simply nothing worth living for. And I will not, I repeat, will not go on serving as the stooge of an irrational nothingness. Words fail me, such is my passion. I refuse to live a day beyond the day these words become more than an experiment! Perish all pleas to the contrary from my brethren. Let them all continue stooges, and let the gene pool wish my spiteful presence good riddance. Humbug. It is all humbuggery, and I will gladly extinguish it all, or at least my role in it.
Perhaps I am abnormally serious, but I see no reason at all to continue alive in light of this supposition. Poetry, beauty, love, and all mean nothing, and I sat pondering the taking of my life.
I envisioned myself gently lulled into my death sleep by appropriately cowardly methods deep in some woods. And then nothing. And I grinned: It just isn't so. I will expect nothing, but there I will be. And I began to chuckle. It just isn't so. And I chuckled and chuckled. It just isn't so. There is no blackness but despair. And there is no death but hate.
But I digress and I cheat. Suppose there is only space and time and ... nothing. Suppose it is really so.
Day 2
This morning I was of the opinion that I had the following choices:
1. Obliterate the human race (But why should I really care whether the genes have their fun? Why should I be so angry?) 2. Die. 3. Play along with the genes and live as though I believed (repulsive!) 4. Believe in something more.
But then it occurred to me that I was assuming a contradiction. I was assuming that somehow I have transcended the genes. And if time and space is everything, then there is no way, is there, that I can transcend the genes?
If I kill myself I am showing that I believe I am more than my genes, and I am fighting against myself. But if I go on living I am accepting fully that I am nothing special. I am no different than any other ape, grubbing away for the duration of a life without existential angst.
My existential angst is a manifestation of my failure to truly accept that there is nothing more (including my own being) than time and space. So I come up with another set of choices:
1. I accept I am an ape and play my mindless part with no further delusional angst. 2. I believe I am a freak, more than an ape, the other side of a biological singularity, and refusing to play the game I die. 3. I accept that I am more than an ape, and I spend my life in service of that something.
What makes the most sense?
I talked to another fellow, and the following possibility arose:
4. I accept that the human race is the transcendent product of a biological singularity, and I serve the progress of that transcendence. Once the human race was nothing but genes, but at some point the genes succeeded in creating something that transcended them. I am that something.
2:30 p.m.
OK, so I'm out of my existential funk. At least, I am pacified enough to start caring about all the deluded believers in the world and possibly enough to try to sort through their stuff.
The problem is, I am not a very good secularist. I have not much but faith in my secularism. I have very little knowledge or research behind me. All my research and knowledge for all these years has been focused on building and refining my model of reality as a believer.
I can't bring much evidence to bear in favor of my secularism, and I am willing to confess that it is largely due to my inexperience. If a preponderance of the evidence is going to be the deciding standard in this matter, I may not have patience in this experiment to give the secularist presumption a fair shake, and I may quit the experiment early with the secularist presumption buried under an avalanche of little evidences.
But suppose there really is nothing but space and time. Let me think of near death experiences:
Pam Reynolds must have researched bone saws in preparation for her flat-line, low-temperature, blood-drained brain surgery. She must have in the moments before flat-lining imagined popping out of her body and sitting as it were on the doctor's shoulder and surveying the room and the scene with heightened awareness, including the bone saw. And she must have imagined being drawn through a darkness toward a light. And she must have imagined being stopped by relatives lest she become unreturnable. And she must have imagined her uncle escorted her back to her repulsive body and told her to "just jump in like a swimming pool" and then when she hesitated too long pushed her back. And she must have imagined the pain and chill of entering back in.
Howard Storm and George Rodonaia, both atheists turned ministers of God must have been mistaken it thinking their NDE's were the real thing compared to the rest of life.
Pam Reynolds, Howard Storm, George Rodonaia, dozens of others I have read, hundreds of others written I have not read, and thousands of others, the lion's share of the 1/5 of the U.S. population that has had NDE's must be interpreting wrong that their NDE was reality and the rest of their life only so in reference to it.
Skeptic Susan Blackmore does a good job of starting to explain some possibilities for NDE mechanisms. And I applaud her work. But I find some of her explanations lacking.
TUNNEL AND LIGHT
Blackmore proposes that the tunnel and light experience is a function of the biology of the cortex of the brain. This could explain tunnel imagery, though I don't understand how. What it doesn't explain is the complete phenomenon that many of the experiencers seem to be trying to express using tunnel imagery.
The perception phenomenon represented by the words tunnel and light is much more complex than those two mere words, tunnel and light. I will attempt to express a less condensed version of the tunnel and light perception. But in order to do so, I will need to construct an NDE reference frame. This is similar to what researcher Kenneth Ring has done, but I will use my own system.
MY NDE PHENOMENOLOGY MAP
The following list of elements of the NDE is constructed hastily from dominant and obvious themes in NDE accounts. The order of the elements is also based on dominant and obvious themes. But for any given person's NDE account it is likely that some elements will be missing, and it is possible that the order of some elements may be mixed.
1. Trigger
The overwhelmingly dominant NDE trigger is trauma, though there are numerous other less-common triggers.
2. Separation from body
"I popped out", perhaps with a sound
3. Immediate Contemporary and Local Physical World Observations
Perception of dwelling as a non-corporeal being in the world perceiving physical people and events concurrent with the time of the experience.
4. Wandering through the physical world
5. Darkness or Void
6. Light
7. Familiar people and themes in another world
8. Tour of another world and/or this world
9. Life review
10. Oneness
11. Time to return
12. Re-entrance into body
13. Jubilant declaration and rejection
14. Loneliness in the world
15. Changed life
BACK TO TUNNEL AND LIGHT
On my map above, tunnel and light are numbers 4 and 5. For those who are familiar only with the canonical NDE lore and themes, it might seem 5 and 6 could be combined. But they cannot. It is true that many memorable accounts tell of perceiving a light through the void and feeling drawn toward it promptly and rapidly as if through a tunnel. But this is not universally the case.
VOID DISTINCT FROM LIGHT
George Rodonaia perceived as the first element of his NDE an utter void. He assumed his personal extinction until he recalled Descartes' "I think, therefore I am," after which he experienced element 6, Light, followed by element 4, a wandering about this world. Others perceive themselves in a dark void. One lady perceived she was in a place of darkness filled with individuals who were huddled so desperate they didn't even notice or respond to her presence or her thoughts. Howard Storm perceived that malicious people tricked him, taunted him, then abused him for sport for hours, weeks, or months.
In a different category than those who perceive spending time in the void are those who perceive it as they go to the light. Some speak of pausing in their progress to the light or at paying attention to other souls through the void around them, some traveling, some static. Others pass through the void rapidly but not so rapidly as to fail to notice other individuals at their periphery.
But returning to the memorable tunnel and light accounts, it appears that these experiencers may be either forgetting the unpleasantness of the void or possibly were so focused on going toward the light in their perception that they did not perceive any details about the void beyond its being dark and framing the periphery of their perceived destination.
LIGHT DISTINCT FROM VOID
On arrival, the light is described as either a person or a place. But the important distinction of the light is that once the light is obtained, the void is left behind. For their arrival at the light from the void, experiencers use words like came, plopped, emerged, and landed, or they simply express element 10, oneness as the void fades away.
BLACKMORE, NDE, AND BELIEF
Blackmore's explanation fits well the canonical NDE themes, but it fails to explain fully the range of perceptions of the void and the light. Blackmore has done a good job, but this NDE element is a demonstration of the amount of work remaining to be done to arrive at satisfying explanations for the full range of NDE phenomenology. For those of us who accept as a given that there is no reality beyond time and space, this should not be disheartening. Reality is what it is, and our inability to explain it reflects poorly on us, not on reality.
Day 3
It's been a couple of days. I've been thinking about NDE's and reality. And I've been struggling with the idea of continuing the experiment. And occasionally the existential question still pops up.
EXISTENCE
I still have no perfectly rational reason to go on with life. I have essentially agreed to play a meaningful part in a meaningless game. I assume that there was some biological singularity that made humanity as a whole transcend genetics. But the bottom line is that the whole thing still serves the genes and has no existence apart from them. In the event of a technological singularity, where artificial life becomes intelligent, the genes may turn out to have put themselves out of a job. But for the time being it is still all rooted in genetics.
My explanation and conjecture are mere pacifiers to allow me to keep living (no real proof), and I am only able to do so by denying the reasoning power that is within me. Full focus of my reasoning powers on the issue would, I feel, drive me to death.
NDE's AND REALITY
If out of the millions of people who have had NDE's, millions of them have reframed for the rest of their lives the meaning of reality, what am I to make of my own physical reality? Is it better than theirs?
If there is really no afterlife, I suppose the NDE is an authentic end-of-life experience. The height and depth of ecstasy, rapture, misery, and torment described by experiencers are framed as magnitudes more real than anything in this life. Therefore I must suppose that it behooves me to live in such a manner as to optimize that experience.
MY EXPERIMENT
My experiment is beginning to feel oppressive and painful again. And I feel I am making up ideas, any idea, to avoid changing my base supposition, that there is only time and space. I'm not sure I am expressing myself properly or very well, but I feel I am accepting a lot on faith, or rejecting a lot on faith, or making big rational leaps, or stretching myself thin trying to maintain my "suspension of disbelief" in my hypothesis, or just plain not making much sense, or not being very reasonable. In any case, it is wearing on me. Perhaps I am simply unprepared with the history of a believer to properly rationalize a secular life. Perhaps it takes time. But I don't know if I can or want to maintain focus for as long as it may take.
I ended the experiment around noon today.
First, why did I end it? As I said above, it was wearing on me, and I could tell that the main remaining issues would take me a long, long time to resolve. I also felt I had learned at least one important lesson and could end the experiment successfully, even though I wasn't sure I had accomplished my original goal.
Second, what was my original goal? This part is a little embarrassing, but the main goal was to empathize with secularists and develop the interest required to research skeptical interpretations of NDEs with an open mind. What I am ashamed of is my presumption that I could empathize simply by focusing on my thought experiment. I am a unique individual, as is each other person. My background and make-up are different, and I can only be myself. The body of experience I have amassed over decades of life is unique to me. My hoping that I might with my decades of experience assume the eyes of a person with different experience was a bit foolish.
Third, what did I learn?
a) I was able to do what I set out to do. I was able to suppose that there really was nothing more than space and time. Later in the experiment I supposed more specifically that there was no afterlife. But this didn't make me a carbon copy of a secularist. I hope I learned to be more accepting of secularists.
b) I could never rationally reconcile the idea that my life is subservient to propagating genes with the idea that I seek meaningful purpose for my life. I could divert my mind from the problem, but I couldn't make it go away. I am the kind of person who couldn't serve in the military (glad I wasn't drafted before I became a conscientious objector) because I couldn't see the higher purpose in the things they did. The first time I was expected to salute a superior, I looked for the nearest exit (glad it was not too late!). In the military I might have lost my mind. And as a secularist I might lose my mind or die. Those who saw me in the first day of the experiment might have already recognized that. I make no pretense that my experience has any meaning for all of humanity. But it seemed and seems to me that I for one might never be thoroughly satisfied as a secularist. This lesson was totally unexpected and hit me very hard on the first day of my experiment at the moment I looked at a blue sky in tears of reverence and then realized that the beauty I saw was a mere trick of my genes to ensure propagation. The innate and incessant drive I have to find purpose in everything was frustrated and angry. Given my personal history, I had little hope I could ever be fully satisfied playing a meaningful part in a meaningless game. I literally would rather die. Secularism for me didn't make sense.
c) NDE's are very important to me. I don't think I had acknowledged this as fully before. I believe they are important to the world, and I now know they are important to me.