Burden of proof?

One of the main point of contention between atheists and believers is that atheists insist that there is no conclusive and verifiable proof of the existence of God**. And they are correct, regarding objective proofs. Atheists claim that the burden of proof is on the believers to prove the existence of God.

Look at it from another perspective, if there is a verifiable objective proof of God's existence, then there would be no need for faith. If there is a verifiable proof, then everybody would believe in God, and fear God, and live a compliant life. Then not believing in God would be stupid and there would be no choice, no need for faith, no need for belief, as God's existence would be confirmed. A lot of drama in life would come to an end, many would even say that all drama in life would come to an end. 

If the headmaster is present in a class and the children know it,

They will not speak nor play, and would be all nervous and frozen stiff.

But this is not how this world seems to have been setup. The elusive nature of God seems to be by design. Please take a moment to stop and think about this, because faith is not about choice but about eternal destiny. Atheists, or scientists, or rationalists, or others did not design the world in which we exist. Nor does the world in which we exist needs to conform to any logical model conceivable to the human mind.

With existence of an objective proof faith and belief cease to be a virtue. I am not saying that faith is a virtue, but to believe in concepts taught be the prophets unquestionably is an essential part of any religion. Certainly there is every chance that a person starts believing in a prophet whose teachings may or may not deliver on their promise, or the student may not understand the teaching properly, and that is a constant persistent doubt in most believers. This is as if it adds different colors to the religious and spiritual landscape of society. This complicates the choices further, but again this seems to be by design - Nature is characterized by presence of extreme variety, and presence of many different schools of thoughts also conforms to this.

Coming back to the question of proof. The system of belief in this world seems to be such that glimpses of the unknown have been conveyed to few people, who are generally identified as prophets. And stories tell us that after their respective revelation the prophets lives did change, as they lived in awareness of God's presence, while rest of the people around them went on with their normal life oblivious of God. The drama of the world continued for people who were unaware of God's presence. Some people did heed the words of prophets. For others the life's test is to sift through the available teaching and paths, and try to find a way.

Life presents an endless maze of words and ideas,

Walk carefully picking your treasures,

Treasures of words, and faith, and belief,

Leave the wrong turns and take the right ones.

-x-

 **In this blog, by word God, I always refer to the Monotheistic ever present and all powerful God, the Creator of the world. I do not refer to the many different deities present in the many cultures and religions unless specifically highlighted.

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Conflicting maps to the road in the afterlife? Does it matter?

Most of the Eastern religions believe in transmigration, that generally a soul undergoes continuous unending cycle of birth and death, out of which there is a way. While the religions of Mid-Eastern origin believe that after current human birth, the soul undergoes a final judgement with eternal consequence of having to live in either heaven or hell.

Once while discussing this with a friend, my friend pointed out that one of these two paths have to be correct and other incorrect (transmigration or final judgement). I disagreed, following are my reasons for the same.

Human mind requires simple straightforward theories, and complex things are generally simplified until they can be understood. Nature is complex. Founders of religions gave simple views to the nature of life and death that was enough for the disciples to understand the importance of current life, and to explain the intricacies of afterlife was not their primary goal, although they might have described some parts of it but not completely.

It is like traveling on a mountain road, and a sharp blind turn lies ahead. Different religions have put up different signposts of warning before the turn, and not all the signboards tell the same thing, but do have enough common highlights for a human mind to take notice and realize that something is coming. Following are some of the main common things written on the signposts:

1. Death is imminent, and will follow life
2. Our actions and choices in this life can have eternal consequences for personal soul
3. Eternal consequences can be desirable and undesirable, based on pain or joy that will be experienced in each of the possible consequences
4. Mortal would be well-advised to prefer a path of desirable consequences
5. Choice rests with an individual to choose a path, and work own salvation or its contrary, whatever it might be

Now, whether the warning messages on the signposts are correct or not, I don't know. I doubt any normal human being can give evidence for the above claims except for the first, which is obvious.

But is it not important to at least realize that almost all religions we know of have a warning about what's coming after the sharp blind turn on the mountain road, of what's coming after death? The details may differ but we will come to that later, but it is important to realize that there is a common thread of warning. My point is, is it not reason enough to at least take notice and investigate further.

Coming to the differences about the message on the signposts. They primarily deal with following:

1. Some religions say that a soul transmigrates life after life until final salvation or liberation is achieved, and other religions say soul has a final judgement after this life and experiences eternal heaven or hell based on the result of the judgement. Furthermore religions have difference of opinion on the nature of transmigration, heaven and hell.
2. Some religions say that a person could work out his/her own salvation, while other religions say that liberation is based on grace from God, or a saint, or some other way.

Regarding the first difference, for a normal human like me and you there is no way to find out the truth until after death, and then it apparently is too late to act on the information. It is a "Catch 22" situation. But does the difference really matter that much at this point in life, it is clear that the the mountain road has a sharp turn, and then after that there may be speed-breakers or other sharp turns, or a wall, we will know when we reach there. But the warning and religious instruction is for us to slow down right now, and probably reflect our best course of action as we inevitably approach the sharp and fatal turn on the high mountain road. But if a person does think about saving for the rainy day, or investing for retirement, or buying an insurance, and other things of the future, then sparing a thought on this matter may be good and possibly useful.

But, if one really needs to know the correct answer, then I believe there is no single correct answer:

There are too many paths and too many destinations, 

When the confused mind is looking for just one.

Not all rain drops from a cloud reach the ocean, 

They might after an eternity, but eternity can be long.

Regarding the second difference, it really is a personal decision based on the teaching that a person chooses to follow, and the destination that the teaching promises, along with the risk of actual effectiveness of the teaching in fulfilling its promise. Whether the path of choosing would work, I don't know:

Each to his own choice, burden and ferry.

-x-

Limits to science... can science be applied to everything (specially spirituality)?

Science by definition needs objective peer review to confirm validity of a phenomenon. Anything which cannot be objectively measured, or at least subjectively measured/observed by considerable number of people, is considered false or unscientific. In the current post we consider limits to application of science** to spiritual and/or religious experience.

The verifiable criteria for science is its strength and also it's weakness. It is, in a way, democratization of reality (more precisely, "democratization of our understanding of reality"), which neutralizes any possibility of outliers as unscientific, an anomaly. If an artist feels exhilaration while painting or performing a musical piece, but other people do not while doing the same thing, then is the artist's exhilaration fake (or unscientific) as it is not verifiable objectively (plugging in measuring equipment, assuming it can measure subjective experience, may cause change in artist's body parameters, by virtue of being plugged in)?

Reliance on peer review, approval and verification, also brings up an interesting possibility that "anything which cannot be peer reviewed and verified is beyond the scope of science, and science cannot be used to explain such phenomena as it is not equipped for it."

To elaborate, the scientific method has, when applied to spirituality, following main subjective steps (taken from Wikipedia diagram titled, "The scientific method as a cyclic or iterative process"):

1. Make observations
2. Develop testable predictions
3. Gather data to test predictions

Rest of the steps in the cyclic method are not considered for the purpose of present discussion. For the above steps, there is no reliable scientific equipment to measure subjective spiritual experience (not that I know of), and the human body/mind is the only way to make observations, gather data, and verify test results in such scenarios. The variations of human mind/body/mood/training/environment is so vast that it is difficult to measure any type of data reliably and make predictions. The same people attending the same classes display different characteristics. Experimental psychology and psychiatry have a very high level of approximation.

To add to the complexity of verifying spiritual experience, by definition spiritual experience has very low chance of manifesting itself (not everybody trying to hear from God does hear from God, but stories of prophets tell that they did hear from God, but it seemed like a special privilege). 

In a nutshell, the problem of applying science to spiritual/religious experience is "How can science be used to verify and explain sparsely occurring phenomena, for which there is no definite method to collect positive data" (positive data is that which can confirm the phenomena). We can say that a phenomena is just hearsay, or superstition because millions tried to get an experience but failed. But we need to remember that even if one of the persons who claim to have a spiritual experience is telling the 'truth', then it is real. And so perhaps the fact is that science is not mature enough to be applied to this particular set of problems.

Science is a very reliable hammer, but not every problem in the world is a nail.

Some religious and spiritual experience reported by few outliers may come in this category. No doubt there are more than enough false claims to fool the gullible, but even if there is a single 'genuine' claim, is that not a reason enough for further investigation.

To recap - as highlighted above, the most common equipment used to measure a subjective experience is the human body/mind itself. And going by the differences (physical and psychological) in the human body/mind as a measurement tool, there is a high degree of possibility that even true claims may remain unverifiable. How many times does it happen that in a jungle safari only a few people of the group may catch glimpse of an elusive animal in the act of a hunt, never to be seen again for a long time. Professional photographers have to pitch tent for years before they are able to get truly detailed pictures in some cases. How many of scientists are willing to pitch tent with same amount of patience for a glimpse of the unexplained, specially when there is no likelihood of getting a funding? Human subjects cannot measure/observe in equal capacity. This shortcoming is generally overcome by increasing number of subjects whose feedback is considered to reduce error and personal bias. But is voting a science (I called it voting because beliefs could potentially alter experience, so even if a person votes honestly, they might have experienced different things because of different beliefs)? Basically conventional science has little place for subjective phenomena, which is generally identified as an anomaly, but highlights the limitation of science also.

Another interesting aspect of a scientific claim is that it has to be falsifiable. So in effect all theories are true until we get sufficient data to disprove it, basically a theory is waiting to be invalidated as more data is gathered. A scientific theory is waiting to be replaced by a better theory. This brings up another interesting question - Can science really be used to explain and address absolute facts (absolute truths), as it might seem that there is no (or little) space for absolute facts/truths in science?**

-x-

**Note: My knowledge of the "philosophy of science" is limited, but it is an interesting subject which deals with what science is and how reliable it can be. I would encourage rationalists (and atheists), the self proclaimed champions of science, to spend time understanding where science can be applied or cannot be applied, before they "bet the ranch" on reason and science.
-x-

PS: The above post does not cover a person applying the scientific method on self, and systematically trying to understand personal experience which are of a spiritual/religious nature. I believe this should be possible (because the data gathering equipment remains same, the body and mind of self), but what may not be as effective is trying to get the resulting theories, which came out of personal experience, verified by the wider scientific community. So there is always the risk of misunderstanding a personal experience, due to lack of peer-verification.

-x-

This may well be a path on which you have to walk alone,

For if you seek the comfort of company,

Know that you might be on a different path,

You alone need to convince your mind,

Of the truth that you can perceive,
But if you do find a like mind, do not forget gratitude.

-x-

The myth of human intelligence and understanding God's reasons

Rationalists have vigorously argued the improbability of God's existence, based on their own inability to understand God's motives. Questions like the following, but not limited to:

1. How could God do this? Why would God do this?
2. If there is a God, why is there suffering, war, death, terrorism, etc in this world?
3. Why do good people have a bad experience?
4. Why do some bad people have a good comfortable life?
5. Why does not God show Himself?
6. Who created God?
7. I don't understand, if there is a God, then... <fill your words here>?
8. I can't imagine, if there is a God, then...<fill your words here>?
9. It does not make sense, if there is a God, then...<fill your words here>?

The answer to all these questions is: "We don't know", or more specifically, "I don't know". It is illogical to insist that our inability to answer any of the above questions means that there is no God, or that God is unreasonable, or anything else that we want to prove. Blaming all the ills in the human world to God, is like blaming parent's intention and power for a fight between their young children (and most young siblings do have some fights, which sometimes result in injury).

It does mean that the much celebrated human intelligence is not good enough to understand the world around us. How would the rationalists explain all the supposed bad things (crime, death, different life spans of different creatures, death of the young, war, etc) in the world, assuming that there is no God. Randomness and probability! Is that even an explanation, or an intelligent way of saying "I don't know". I believe, they surely will cook up reasonable sounding theories to explain it, but which cannot be proved as true or false for a long time, which does raise question about the validity of the theory.

How could people understand God's mind and reasons, when people don't understand their own minds and reasons. Human mind, including the champion of rationalists, will most likely be unable to answer the many philosophical questions about themselves.

1. Why does a person like a particular color over another, 
2. Why does a person like a particular food item over another, 
3. Why do different people have different answers for same questions (favorite color, music, food, career choice, marriage partners, etc), Countless other questions of human preferences where a reason for a particular choice remain elusive?
4. Why is a human being particularly good at somethings, and not others?
5. Why do people find difficult to kick their addictions, or phobias? Or, to change their habits?
6. Where does motivation, will-power, etc to change habits come from?

I agree there will be some incomplete theories about some of the above things, but if we understood answers to these questions well enough, then marketers would be able to sell even crappy products just by showing convincing advertisements, and mental hospitals would be empty as everyone's mind would be working perfectly.

Billions of human specimen are available for doing scientific research and understanding the human mind, and still we don't understand the human mind. Then it appears foolish to insist that we should be able to understand God's mind and reasons, whom we have never met.

To add another dimension to this question, why do animals do the things they do, how do their minds work? A lot of animal species are available for research, but human knowledge of working of animal mind remains rudimentary.

If people and science did understand the human mind and reasons, then mental illness would have more definite treatment and cures. Most mental illness treatments have a degree of unpredictability, and most times the illness is managed and not cured. The reason for mental illness has eluded the best minds of science.

Many scientists spend their whole life working on a handful of problems. If they were smarter probably they should have solved the problems in lesser time, and done more with their life. And a majority of the humans beings on the planet won't even understand the the problems that they work on. So it does tell something about the average human intelligence. Being more intelligent than a pet cat or dog, does not mean human intelligence is good enough to solve all the problems in the world, and explain everything in this world, or explain Creator's mind.

Most likely, a Noble prize winning physicist does not know how to perform a heart surgery. A genius mathematician may not know how to fix a car engine, or cook a particular dish. A charted accountant may not know the best technique to increase a farm produce. The basic idea is that human knowledge and skills are limited, and a very intelligent human being may be ignorant about knowledge of things beyond his/her immediate interests. So why would you expect 'expert' advice on theology from a biologist, a mathematician, physicist, or a common lay person (who may have struggled at many of the basic subjects in schools, maybe art/music, maybe science, maybe finance, maybe literature). Especially when the knowledge of God has a component of experiential knowledge (and even then, not everyone in a Gold-rush is lucky!).

Bottom line is that our knowledge of the human or animal mind will almost always be incomplete. It will keep increasing, but most likely remain incomplete. Human beings understand the working of a mind using experiments, observations, measurement, dissections, medical reports, etc, and there is no way similar data can be collected for the Creator's mind, assuming God exists. So how could we understand God's reasons? Is it even logical to assume that we could?

-x-

God and gods...?

Different cultures have different beliefs about God. Many of the deities are culture specific, and do not find any mention beyond a culture/religion. Different cultures may see similar or same deity in different light. Some religion believe in a supreme God, the Creator of all that is there and more. By definition belief in a supreme Creator, if it is true, has to refer to same God, irrespective of the religion, as there can be a single supreme Creator.

Most of the deities can be classified in one or more of the following categories (there could be more which I have missed):

1. Mythological figures - People, entities or spirits believed to have existed or exist now, but there is no proof, there could be various stories describing the power of the deity, and benefits of worshiping them.
2. Historical figures not necessarily with spiritual connections - People/rulers/celebrities/ancestors/etc who have actually lived, and there are worship places for them (google search can help find some examples). With passing of centuries various stories may develop around the central characters and they may become part of future mythology.
3. Natural forces - Sun, moon, planets, sky, wind, rivers, etc.
4. Other living or non-living - Plants, trees, animals, places, symbolic items, etc (specific instances or a whole species/group).
5. Historical figures with a spiritual connection - Mainly identified as Prophets and Saints. This is the most complex category, as a Prophet or Saint can sometimes be understood as a direct representative of the Supreme Monotheistic Deity Himself, and so deserves the same respect and affection as the Monotheistic God. Unity in apparent duality could be hard to comprehend. It could be understood that rather than resorting to miraculous revelation, God chooses to reveal Himself using the words and actions of a Prophet or Saint. But it can be really difficult for a common person to discern a Prophet or a Saint. Another complexity comes when we realize that a supposed saint might be a devotee of a Deity in any of the other categories, or might proclaim him/herself as a God, or come up with own theory of deities or even be an atheist. This is the most visible category to which people can associate with and communicate with, and are most likely to be influenced with. Over time they become part of mythology, founders of religions or cults. I personally find this category too complex to navigate, and to discern genuine people could be hard, and even harder would be to find what were the exact teaching that they taught. Each teaching has to be taken on a case by case basis. In this category I try to focus my efforts to understand the teaching of Shri Guru Granth Sahib Ji, which contain the words of the Sikh Prophets as well as few Saints, and which was personally compiled and dictated by the Sikh Prophets few hundred years back. This is also easy for me to do as I was born in a Sikh family.
6. Monotheistic God - One supreme Deity as Creator of all, with limitless qualities which are not possible to describe. Formless, all powerful, etc are some of the words used to commonly describe the Deity. The Name of the Deity, is the truest and closest representation of the Deity, as all other descriptions will fall short and will not do justice. A Name which refers to the Supreme Being may be the only perfect representation of the Supreme Deity conceivable to a human mind, as a Name encompasses and refers to all known and unknown qualities of the Named.  (NOTE: This is the category where I have most focused my time, energy and belief, and readers may find that my views/opinions are biased in favor of a Monotheistic God)

I wish there was a simple way to decide the object of one's devotion, but reality is all but simple. The reason people would worship any of the above or other type of deity could be many, including cultural/family/religious tradition, as a prayer for a favor or solution, appeasement, devotion, love, etc. Value of the prayer and devotion, in authentic cases, is subjective to each individual and is not in scope of science (because objective validation is not possible, at least with today's technology and methods).

Devotee of each type of diety have their specific reasons, and any benefits that they perceive would be for them to say. I have not spend time in understanding this area.

The basis of my decision to focus my devotion and energy on the monotheistic God is primarily because I am looking for eternal solutions. I am not just looking for solutions for my daily needs, current life-time issues, but also solutions of a more permanent nature. Solutions which will work beyond present life, if there is a scenario where my soul has an after-life experience (if there is such a thing). You might say, so many reasons for a solution to an imaginary problem, which has not even been proved to exist! What if this thought and feeling is just a Placebo? Well, I have always had a cautious approach in most matters, plus I have my own reasons to believe. You are free to choose a more adventurous approach, should you wish, but I would not recommend it, as there might be no second chance (at least none that has been proven yet. To get a sense of adventure, and not an imagined adventure, people could try to live without insurance, savings and retirement funds, but no financial planner would actually recommend it).

Eternal solutions are timeless, which are beyond the natural limitations that might bind other categories of Deities. Limitations like time, birth, death, place, etc. So for me this leaves with the only possible choice for a solution, that is to depend on a Monotheistic deity, who by definition is timeless and immune to affects of natural forces. Creator of all that exists, and free from external influence. A decision of this nature is not the end, but a beginning, to start a journey of more meaningful focused exploration.

-x-

Afterlife, transmigration and other things

Most religions have a component of some afterlife experience of an individual, with possible desirable or undesirable experience based on what is done in current life. There are differences in the exact nature of the afterlife experience, but the pleasant and unpleasant component is a common thread in almost every religion.

There is not much that can be done to verify these claims, and it is more a matter belief. Each individual needs to decide for self whether to believe in it or not. It is matter of weighing the word of a prophet or a saint against the word of a contemporary individual, whom do you want to trust, whom do you see as telling the truth. For a believer the choice is obvious. There have been claims whether the prophet or saint ever existed, whether the words are really their own, whether we understand what they said, and finally whether they really were whom we believe them to be. Each person needs to decide for self on these points, and it is no small task considering the validity of words printed in newspapers today are hard to verify, especially political matters, and how much more the difficulty to verify words that were spoken or written many years ago.

But I believe pushing self to make a decision on this matter is worth it. If it is evidence of an afterlife that you are waiting for, it is unlikely to come in our lifetime. Each of us have only a lifetime to decide and place our bet with a supposed everlasting consequence. Science will continue to find new facts for centuries to come, but none of us will be here beyond maybe the present century. So in this matter science can give no practical solution in a lifetime apart from perennial indecision or skepticism. One thing that is apparent in this world is that "Ignorance does not give immunity, nor does indecision". If a person does not know that a snake is poisonous and allows himself to be bitten, he will still die. In courts of nature, ignorance or indecision is not a defense. This does look life baseless fear-mongering, and maybe it is, or maybe it is not, we can only know after this life, when it is apparently too late to change our bets. To some this may not look fair. I don't know, but that is how this game of life, literally speaking, seems to have been set up. Limits of human understanding is a topic for another post.

One way to see this would be that there does seem to be at least two differences between a dead body and living body. First is life, the movement, the animation, something like an electricity or power switch going on and then off. Second is character, the behavioral part, all that makes a person a unique person different from other people, the 'I'-ness of an individual. Another thing we can observe in this world is that Nature wastes nothing, absolutely nothing at all (or, at least I have failed to find it). Everything is recycled in Nature. Rivers are ever-flowing not because there is infinite quantity of water, but because all water is recycled. Farms give ever-flowing crops season after season, not by manufacturing new stuff but recycling soil, water and nutrients. Earth seems to have endless birth of organisms and animals, by recycling the dead bodies. Going by the same principle, if there is stuff which represents 'I'-ness of an individual, the feeling of I and me, then that too will be recycled. This could be the thing which religion calls a soul. Each organism, or animals at least, seems to have a character of its own, an 'I'-ness component to it, and we can be sure Nature is not creating it anew for each organism but reusing it from a previous one.

Coming to the point, why do we not have evidence of an afterlife, why has no one returned to tell us of a tale. How will the organism prove that it has indeed returned, without being treated as a freak or a liar, and how can the claims be verified. What if the memory is being reset so no one remembers? This comes under the category of an assumption which may remain practically unprovable in an individual's lifetime, and lies beyond the reach of science as there are no methods to objectively measure and verify it.We need to remember that an assumption may not be wrong just because it cannot be proved, but that does not mean that every unprovable assumption is true.

Coming to which religion is telling the truth, here again each individual needs to decide for self. Only thing I would say is, that a hand-written map may not be drawn to scale, may not be completely accurate, but as long as it does not make major mistakes in few key points, it can still allow the traveler to reach the destination (on the other hand, if the traveler is unable to discern the possible inaccuracy, it can cause delay and inconvenience).

-x-

God, religion and atheism

Sometime I feel that atheists love to hate religion, or so it seems. I won't say whether the love and hate is justified, but I do find it amusing when their views and points on religion are used as proof to show that God does not exist. I believe God (as per monotheism) and religion are two different topics although closely linked.

To take a popular quote and modify it for the purpose of this article, I would say

If a finger pointing to the Moon is crooked, it does not mean the Moon does not exist. It just means that the finger is crooked.

 And, then again, if a beautiful finger pointing to the Moon appears to be crooked, it does not mean the Moon does not exist. It just means that the beautiful finger seems to be crooked.

Any particular religious theology is like a finger pointing to God. It does not mean that the finger has to be perfect, nor does it mean that it is imperfect. Maybe it is perfect in theory, but less than perfect in practice. I do not know. Like a country's constitution might be perfect, but that will not mean that there are no crimes happening in the country. Apart from theology a religion may also have social or political rules/guidelines, which are unrelated to theological aspects but may be influenced by it. Any apparent or actual flaws in the non-theological aspects of a religion is no reason to reject its theological aspects as well, without proper consideration.

To illustrate how atheists use apparent flaws in practice of religion to discredit the idea of a monotheistic God we could check following famous books:

The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins - My copy of the book from Black Swan publishers has around 400+ pages, excluding Appendix, Index, Notes, etc. At page 189, the author states that the conclusion of the book till that point is that there is almost certainly no God. Maybe the book should have been called 'The Improbable God'. After page 189, the book discusses about possible roots of religion, morality, and apparent flaws in religious practice. To go back to the previous quote, the author finds it important to discuss the flaws of an apparently crooked finger, rather than discuss the possibility of existence of Moon, in more than half of the book. I do give credit to the author for devoting at least some part of the book to theology, but maybe it does not do justice to the title of the book. I am not saying that religion is impeccable, anything practiced by a 'group' of humans is hardly so and has its positive and negative side, be it religion, racism, nationalism, casteism, etc. Human passion for each of their respective group has had good as well as bad affect on society, and singling out religion may not be a correct approach. If anything needs to be singled out it would perhaps be human passion and inclination for unreasonable action, given a chance, a choice and a reason.

God is not Great, Christopher Hitchens - To be fair, I would admit that I could not complete this book, as this book has very less to say about God. The name of the book could have conveyed that the author will highlight the flaws of religion instead of the discuss the possibility of existence of God. A quick look at the table of contents of the book on Wikipedia would show that most chapters deal with highlighting the flaws of various religion, and not theology (there is some theology discussed here and there, but not much, but I would know better only if I completely read the book). Coming back to the initial quote, we could say that the author has presented an exhaustive critique of how ugly the fingers apparently look, instead of discussing the possibility and nature of Moon, that the fingers seem to point to.

My personal view is that if God exists, then existence of a monotheistic God would not be constrained by any definition of any particular religion. Maybe a particular religious theology has got some part correct. Maybe some religious theology has got a lot of parts correct, but we may not have understood it well enough. In fact, theology does insist that it is not possible to know and define God completely. This is not much different from a perspective that human knowledge about universe will always have missing parts, be it knowledge of space, ocean, or sub-atomic particles. There is always more to find out, and refine our understanding and theories.

Words explain some aspects, and are very important for transmission of knowledge, but never completely explain all the details, as the details could be endless. Consider the parable of the blind men who check out an elephant for the first time, without having any prior information about how it looks. Each touch a part of the elephant and describe it as per the part they have touched, and each give a different picture. This is not much different from human knowledge about God, where in a lifetime people have a chance to feel only certain aspects of reality and then describe it for posterity. It is hard to say what is true or false, but it is likely to be incomplete.

Atheists/rationalists do bring some value to society in going after charlatans who liberally populate the spiritual and religious landscape of society. But in matters concerning monotheistic theology their contribution has not been useful, in my opinion.

-x-

Creator's Puzzle

I believe in an all powerful, ever present, monotheistic God, but it was not always so. Like many I have had my time of skepticism, when I considered myself an atheist and thought of it being the only intelligent choice. But as time passed I found myself spending a lot of my time thinking over existence of God and on why this knowledge remains elusive to the human mind, if God actually did exist.

I believe the endless debate between atheists and believers is premature, and we have not stopped to think and find out whether it is possible to have knowledge of the creator in the first place. I call this problem the 'Creator's puzzle'. 

Creator's puzzle is - "Is it possible for the created to have knowledge of it's creator? And, if yes, then under what conditions can a created specimen have knowledge of it's creator."

People have long argued about the fact whether God exists or not, but a more fundamental question remains unanswered, whether can we know about existence of God, our creator. If yes, then what are the conditions of obtaining this knowledge and verifying the facts.

In reality, belief in a God could be a matter of perennial argument with very good for and against points. But the God Himself cannot be argued into or out of existence. God exists or does not exist irrespective of the fact that one wins or looses an argument. Belief in God has to be a matter of discovery to find whether God exists or not, and not a matter of arm-chair logic and reason. A lot of things in the universe exist irrespective of whether human beings can logically explain them or not.

Coming back to Creator's puzzle, which deals with any creator-created pair and not just God-human pair. In the remaining post I try to present a couple of models for creator-created pairs and explain conditions under which the created could obtain knowledge of the creator.

In the first model, consider a hypothetical computer simulation game, a biological simulation, with a single human player and actor controlling all the characters and life forms in the biological simulation (i.e. single player playing a computer simulation game). Assume also that the single human player is also a software programmer who has created the simulation program. So in the above model, the biological simulation game and its characters are the 'created' life forms, while the human player is the 'creator' of the simulation game and its characters.

Last assumption is that the different life forms in the simulation game have a form of basic consciousness programmed into it (consciousness as we claim to understand it, not necessarily as it is in nature).

Now as per 'Creator's puzzle' under what conditions would one of the created life-form, say a digital deer or dog or human, become aware of its creator. Any programmer could tell that this will be possible only if the programmer him/herself were to program the code for knowledge of the creator's existence. Or if not the actual code, the programmer would have to write code into the simulation software such that the knowledge of the creator could be obtained indirectly by a created life-form. Programmers realize that nothing in a computer program works unless it has been programmed to work that way. And if some unexpected or unpredictable behavior is observed then the system would have been programmed to display unexpected or unpredictable behavior.

A second but similar model could be considered where the created life-form is a type of self-replicating robots which have been let loose on a distant planet with conditions for the robots to have a self-sustaining existence. Something like a colony of self-replicating society of robots with human like, but man-made, consciousness, created by a scientific research organization. Now consider under what conditions would the robots know of the existence of the research organization which created them, assuming the research organization only observes the robots from a distance never revealing themselves. Only way may be for the organization to program this knowledge into the robots. Or, to program a behavior into the robots such that they seek the creator organization and stop the search only once predefined criteria of identifying a creator organization are found to match a discovery.

In both the above models, it is easy to see that logically speaking, knowledge of a 'creator' is not for the 'created' to find by its own effort, but by virtue of it being programmed into the 'created'. And another very important point is that a 'creator' is free to program different levels of knowledge into different specimen of a particular life-form, and different specimen need not come to same conclusion about any particular experience or discovery, if it has not been programmed that way. Also, trying to find an objective explanation of some subjective experience may not always be an intelligent and/or valid approach.

Coming back to the main topic for this post, the Creator's puzzle. Based on the above, It is my understanding that for a human mind to insist that it can get knowledge and experience of it's Creator by it's own efforts alone is logically and fundamentally flawed. I believe this knowledge and experience can only come from the Creator Himself, either directly or indirectly through a seeking behavior specifically programmed into human mind, which is very similar to the notion that God and His knowledge is revealed.

An implicit assumption here is that the above creator-created pair models are close enough to God-human pair, to justify a comparison. Maybe the above models are an over-simplification, but that is not much different from a large number of scientific theories which explain, with reasonable accuracy, a very complex world using simple models that human mind can grasp (but this will probably be a topic of another post).

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PS: As with all human understanding and theories it is possible that my understanding will increase with time, and in future I may be able to share better/deeper insight.

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