the case for god
from my "newly atheist" friend
my friend from college with whom i discuss isms and metaphysics instead of.. i don’t know sports or stocks.. called me yesterday evening. said he’s decided to abandon a couple of things in his life. some might call him crazy. many people in college did.
he has abandoned:
spirituality (he’s been christian holding non-theistic hindu philosophy)
exertion (not just retire, but also zero pursuits)
the first-world (he’s a naturalized canadian citizen like me)
and moving on to:
atheism
indolence (not even reading!)
wayanadu (one of the most beautiful places inside one of the 10 paradises on earth)
turns out his new spiritual awakening transpired after a study of abiogenesis. the other two are personal decisions. but he threw an intriguing idea at me. if you recursively apply the concept of microbial civilization inside our body into the cosmic expanse we might be able to explain god without spiritual alchemy.
each cell in our body is a living organism. even the mitochondria inside each cell is its own life form. what we (want to) eat is greatly determined by the billions of life forms that colonize our gut called the gut microbiome, the effect and scope of which we discovered only very recently. everything from our visible skin to internal organs are teeming with millions billions trillions of micro organisms. each bacterial colony is grinding away like there’s no tomorrow and not knowing about other colonies. they just know their job and do it, get sick, and die.
now what if..
what if us humans are simply a localized colony within an exponentially bigger omniscience, naively grinding away at quantum gravity and artificial neural networks? our colony on earth may have no idea if or when an unknown oncoprotein among us is spreading malignant cells - the cancer might wipe us all out before we realize it!
it’s possible that the secrets of the universe are impenetrable by life-based cognition. is the universe a simulation? could it be a multiplayer simulation with more than one ludic overlord? we don’t know! we don’t know if god is a pre-enlightment era vestige or a numinous truth. or the purpose, the meaning, the beginning, or the end, if there’s any!1
as a result, i only talk to my friend every 1 or 2 years. if that.
i’m personally a fan of douglas adams’s theory that we may not even know what questions to ask for which the answer is the universe. we’re an epistemically arrogant species so be wary of what our intelligence affords us, especially nihilism. nihilism is unattractive at best and depressing at worst.