No Deus Ex Machina for the Epic of Life

The biosphere that we witness today, seething, transforming and unfolding everywhere around us, surrounding us such that we can hardly unclose our eyes anywhere on the planet without opening them to a sight filled with the living and the dead, is part of a story. The vast and infinitely intricate network of replicating and competing organisms on Earth today is only the most recently written chapter in the greatest epic this planet has ever produced. If it is the Earth that is the teller of the tale, evolution is the tongue in which it speaks. Though it is still being told today, the story is an ancient one, having been in its telling for billions of years, it's pages stretching back in time nearly as far as the solar system itself. It is not just epic in length, but also in breadth, for it's details are more layered than the strata of the Grand Canyon, and deeper than the chasms scarring the floor of the Pacific Ocean. Within the grand arc of this epic, there are episodes and chronicles, and there are still more tales yet within them. It is a profound story, that as far as we now know, only the Earth has told. And thus, our planet remains a mysteriously unique weaver of this biological yarn, what I will call The Great Story.

As characters within this story ourselves, we have not yet read every page or understood every plot twist, but through science, we have learned a great deal regarding the unfolding of the events within it. There is so much to be learned from this story, including an understanding of our own origins. I for one, and I know many others as well, are continually astonished by the eloquence of each sentence. Sometimes we are overwhelmed with the beautiful poetry, and other times amazed at the harsh violence of the prose. Sadly, there are important aspects of this story that many people are stubbornly unwilling to accept, such as the fact that it was not penned by any intelligent being. There is no intent within the phrases that describe life. And the only morals we might glean from it are those we choose to attribute to it externally, from our perspective, though the story itself is entirely morally neutral. It may also be tempting to place ourselves as the lead characters, but we are not. We are not the climax of the story, nor are we the protagonists (or antagonists). No character, that is, no species is any more integral to the Great Story than any other.

Some of those who insist on clinging to these misconceptions do so by invoking a literary shortcut, the deus ex machina. This is a Latin phrase, which translates to "God of the machines." It is a derisive term used to describe a particular tool that a lazy or unimaginative author might use to resolve the story's conflict with coincidence and absurdity rather than by the reasoning or resources of the characters. It originated within Greek tragedies, which would sometimes use machines like pulleys to lower an actor portraying God down onto the stage, who would thus intervene in a way that resolves the apparently insurmountable problems facing the protagonist. The use of such a plot device quickly became frowned upon for its absurdity and its unsatisfying solution that could be used for any problem, while utterly lacking in cleverness and requiring no thought from the author. Perhaps even more importantly, the deus ex machina solution does not follow with the logic of the rest of the story, but arises as some external force, making it not a resolution at all, but a resignation.

Although no evidence suggests that any intelligence had a hand in the creation or diversification of life, there is a movement among the ranks of the religious right to undermine science and insert a deity into the awe inspiring epic tale our planet is telling. Creationism, and the spurious euphemism it sometimes hides behind, "intelligent design," are the religiously indoctrinated persons' attempts to rewrite the Great Story so that it reads like a pathetic attempt at a dollar-bin trash novella. The biggest change they hope to make is to insert the biggest, most absurd deus ex machina of all: god. The irony should not escape us, the most piteous "god of the machine" there is is "god" itself. The Great Story's actual resolutions are the laws of nature, the mechanisms of evolution. Evolution is not only a beautifully simple explanation for the grand complexity of life, it is an inevitability. Replication with variation in a selective environment (which perfectly describes genes) has to result in the increase of replicators better equipped to survive in that selective environment. Their complexity will increase. These are all internal resolutions to the story. "God did it!" is the lazy, unimaginative resignation of a mind infected with the anthropocentric and self-centered values of religious fundamentalism.

Wikipedia's article on deus ex machina tells us that "it does not pay due regard to the story's internal logic and is often so unlikely that it challenges suspension of disbelief, allowing the author to conclude the story with an unlikely, though more palatable, ending." There is no more a fitting example of a deus ex machina than the insertion of "god" into the great story of life.

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"The Trinity is a feeble glimmer next to the glory of the Calculus, Genesis is a short, limping, clumsy limerick next to the epic poetry of Evolution." -P.Z. Myers, from a blog entry posted after I had started this one, but before I had posted it. If I were superstitious, I might be able to make the claim of being on the same wavelength, or some such nonsense(!)

Accepting the Permanence of Loss

My dog died. He's gone. I wish I could say he's gone on somewhere. Maybe into a childishly wishful doggie heaven, where he will be forever happy, forever chewing on a treat at the foot of his protective master, my grandfather, who also breathed his last lungful of nitrogen and oxygen molecules a few years ago. I wish I could take comfort in that ideal but mythological land where the dead live blissfully on. There are many people who actually believe that such a place exists and that some invisible, intangible aspect of themselves that still has the ability to experience will go there when their neurons stop firing. I am not one of those people.

Perhaps I could still find comfort in another popular belief that some essence of old Blue, again ethereal and imperceptible, has floated off and slipped into a freshly fertilized canid zygote, or into a collection of cells that recently replicated and thus fits into the human-defined category of: an organism. I must admit, the weight of loss would not feel so heavy with a conviction that Blue-Mo has been reincarnated as a new puppy somewhere, with so many socks yet to chew on, so many dinners yet to enthusiastically wolf down. But where is this essence that latches itself into new flesh at some magic moment? There isn't even a hint that such a thing exists. If it did, then how much of it could really even be Blue? His memories of his experiences, his capacity to sense and to make decisions based on what he sensed, his capacity to react to stimuli... his canine emotions, his houndish thoughts, all arise from the complexity of his biology, the mechanisms, structures, and processes that require no supernatural spark, no transcendental essence to function. Not only is there no reason to believe in that spark, there is good reason not to think that any defining but undefined part of Blue has found a new "host" to reside in, as the idea of reincarnation demands. If I believe that, I may as well believe my stub-tailed companion is in doggie heaven.

No, Blue is gone. Every mole chase he ever experienced has slipped away, unrecorded and irretrievable. In a way, many good times he had still remain, but only as they were recorded from the perspective that my family's and my faulty and biased memories still hold. What was the view like from Blue's end of the frayed article of my sister's clothing during a friendly-snarl-filled game of tug-of-war? Blue's memories, which for a time were recorded by the flashing of electrical impulses in his canine brain can never be played back in our hominid brains. So I'd like to say he "lives on" in my memory. But that's really just a euphemism for the fact that all that's left of his presence is what is recorded, (sometimes in error) in the gray matter of those who had experiences involving him. Still, that euphemism is so much more accurate than the trite and ridiculous phrase suggesting he has "gone to a better place." (Accurate only if said by a true pessimist who considers oblivion better than the alternative experienced by the living.)

It is undeniably true that the effects of Blue's existence and his actions will still ripple outward in time (like that proverbial roughly-spheroid of silicate matter being gravitationally pulled in the direction of and finally into a small inland containment of dihydrogen monoxide between 0 and 100 degrees Celsius). Blues existence, an effect of a long line of other causes itself, will definitely continue to create more effects in the world, mostly in unforeseeable, unknowable ways. Many of the effects of these ripples we may consider "good," others, we would likely consider "bad." But "what Blue is" does not exist at this point in time, or at any point in the future. A dog who once ate a whole thanksgiving turkey and threw it up, only to dine on it once more, does not exist past this point in the dimension defined by it's increase in entropy. That dog I loved, he only exists in the past now, along with my childhood. Along with my Grandparents. Along with another loss that is even now still too overwhelming for me say. Still too difficult to fully accept. I know that everything I've said of Blue applies to far deeper losses as well. But that's reality, and to deny it will only detract from the importance and the meaning of what has been lost.

In some ways, this is bleak. In this light, we see that not just our personal losses, but the losses of history are all the more tragic. We must not forget, though, that the universe could have followed an infinite number of other paths, but instead it took a path where you existed, where I existed... where Blue existed. It took a path that had us on it, travelers ourselves. And as existence rolled along this path that included us, we experienced. And we loved. I loved Blue. I loved my other non-human companions, too. And I loved my Grandparents. I loved my Mother. Even if love (like everything) at the smallest scale is described only by the interactions of particles, like the complexity of organic life or the simplicity of a spiral shape of a galaxy, but unlike the promises of mythology, Love is real.

Goodbye Blue. I'm glad our paths crossed.

Exorcising the "Demon-Haunted World"

I recently read the jewel of a book that is Carl Sagan's Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. It is one of those books that I think should be widely read in popular culture, not just by those apt to agree with it's premise. Sadly, the ones who would most benefit from reading it are the least likely to do so. There are many brilliant reviews of this book on the internet that do it better justice than I ever could, so that's not what this post is going to be.

The title of this great book stirred up some thoughts and images in my mind that the book itself only addressed tangentially. These images which were inspired by Sagan's book, though not it's subject, is what I'd like to talk about. Despite my expectations prior to having read it, Demon Haunted World focused very little on the history of science and it's accomplishments. I don't want to give the impression that I fault the book for not living up to my expectations, because it did. It exceeded them. It just didn't delve into some of the territory I thought it was going to. That makes it no less of a masterpiece. I didn't expect it to be a description of specific advancements through time, necessarily, and it wasn't this. (Other works have already done this extremely well). I (somewhat) mistakenly thought it would be a more general reflection on how science has gradually illuminated the shadows of superstition, revealing them as only the flickering shapes our minds construct from the incomplete bits of reality we can see peeking out from the darkness that hides the deeper but entirely natural truths of the universe. This darkness exists because we have not yet been able to figure a way to bring our candle to that shrouded corner, but this does not mean we never can or that we never will. Indeed, the history of science is the story of our holding that candle up to the dark places where the shadows of ignorance lurk, lighting realities that could not have even been guessed at or dreamed of had it never been lit.

Think of prehistoric times, when humanity undoubtedly believed the world to be haunted by demons and spirits as prolifically as it was by humans and animals. Over time, with a slow growing understanding of nature, with the embracing of logic and rationality to show us reality from mythological explanations invented to avail our fears, those endless demons were exorcised from the collective minds of humanity. They were unmasked as natural phenomena, as the understandable effects of discoverable causes. But the human world, despite all its advances in thought and technology, to this day is still unfortunately far from having completely exorcised it's superstitious false beliefs. The most tenacious and arguably the most dangerous one still remains. The supreme supernatural being. The supposed omniscient demon that still powerfully haunts so many otherwise rational minds: God. It seems clear to me that if we are successful in truly exorcising this last irrationality, it will help to usher in a time of unhindered discovery and possibly of greater peace. For peace is rational. If we fail to do such a thing, even as our technology and our capacity for self harm increases, we will be doomed not just to stifled progress, but perhaps eventually to a return to the demon-haunted world of old. Our logical and technological progress having been only a transient aspect of our species. So many people cling to this last vestige of supernatural wishful thinking in an attempt to appeal to the part of themselves that longs for "something more." But something more than what? More than the mind-boggling majesty that nature is still unveiling to us as reality? The vast majority of those who would use such an impotent argument to hold onto their superstitious hope of an all-powerful and watchful father-figure have no idea of the profound grandeur that only rational and skeptical inquiry has been able to reveal. Yes, there is "more out there." Much more. So let's keep looking instead of giving up and erroneously, childishly giving all mystery the name of just another demon/deity in the shadows.

Taking Note of Some Connections (in which I condemn meat-eating and rape while bashing religion a little too)

Eating meat is natural. ..... Yes, as a vegan I recognize this. But my saying so is not an admission of any kind, because it is not the valid argument in favor of eating meat that so many of my defensively-carnivorous opponents like to pretend it is.

When I say it's natural, I mean that it is one of the things our species has done to gain an advantage in a genetically competitive environment. Individuals who were able to take advantage of a pre-killed, unattended carcass to get a quick and costless dose of protein were more likely to pass on their genes. This and just happening upon prey seems likely to have been the primary, if not only methods our ancestors had for obtaining meat before tool use started. If you disagree, consider the oft-cited example of the last time you chased down an antelope and killed it with your teeth and nails. Physiologically, we are almost entirely built like other herbivores as opposed to omnivores. Our body plan hasn't changed that much since our pre-tool-use days. Other primates who are generally herbivorous have also been known to eat carrion and catch whatever unfortunate smaller vertebrate that wandered too close. Those individuals in our ancestry who learned to make their own carcasses (ie., hunt) furthered that advantage, especially since doing it that way reduced the chances of eating dangerously bacteria-rich (spoiled) meat. So yes, eating meat is natural.

But because something is natural, does that mean it is "good?" This is a misconception known as the naturalistic fallacy. Rape can be used to gain a genetic advantage. I don't think it's necessary to detail the obvious mechanism of that advantage. Rape is seen in non-human animals, and it is very possible, even probable, that it has been used successfully as a means of passing on genes by our own ancestors. Those who spread their genes by force are still spreading that genetic code which does continue to get copied. Like killing animals, rape is a natural way to take advantage of a situation to get your genes copied. Yet while rape is considered a serious crime by all "civilized" societies, the murder of animals is seen by most as inconsequential and even necessary. I hope the health of myself and my fellow veg*ans establishes the un-necessity of meat-eating, and good old reason can show that it is only as inconsequential as human suffering is. So the question comes up, why is it so widely acceptable when rape is not? I mean, the prevalent consensus so often seems to be that "if it's natural, it's alright." Why does this apply to meat but not to rape? It can be argued that at least in past times (or even now in some societies) there wasn't (or isn't) much difference. In societies where women were seen as the property of their husbands or fathers, rape was a crime on par with theft. It was "stealing" another man's goods to copulate with his wife, or with his daughter if she had not yet been bought by a husband. I strongly suspect that is why there is little differentiation between rape and adultery in so many biblical stories. In essence they were the same thing. Eating meat, like forcing a woman into sexual intercourse, was never a crime so long as the meat or the woman belonged to whoever was doing the killing or forcing. In such societies, raping someone else's woman would be similar to stealing someone else's livestock. This is one reason (of many) why the animal welfare movement is strongly related to feminism. Fortunately, thanks to the fact that we have made moral progress (which is based upon the choice not to cause suffering to others, it is not based on any arbitrary and backwards biblical mythologies... but I'll save that for another post) modern societies today feel that rape is wrong because it causes suffering. But so does killing animals for meat, especially in the agony-drenched factory farms from where most of our meat today comes.

This still doesn't answer the question, though, why the difference in our actions regarding one form of suffering compared to another? Because our meat lacks the ability to tell us that we are causing it to suffer. At least beyond the wordless cries that still are obvious exclamations of pain. Just as it may be easy for some people to turn a blind eye to the suffering of other humans, which most of us see as bad character, if not deplorable, it is still easy for nearly everyone in our society to turn a blind eye towards the suffering of non-human creatures. The only ones who would speak up for them are easily written-off as the fringe, and not to be taken seriously. It is easier for us to empathize with a member of our own species that can express themselves to us in terms we understand. Empathizing with animals requires taking another step: putting yourself in the place of a creature that has a mind fundamentally different than yours. Though not so different as to preclude their ability to suffer. Just because they can't copy memes like we do, most of those we murder for food are creatures who have no less capacity to experience pain, fear, or any other negative sensation which we all desperately try to avoid. It is no secret to our understanding of the nervous system that just because animals can't tell us with words that they are suffering does not mean that they aren't. It only makes it easier for us to pretend that they aren't. For feeling, for sensing, they've got the same damn apparatus we do. It's time... long past time to extend our sphere of compassion outwards from just ourselves, to not just our family, not just our tribe, not just our species, but to literally all things that are sentient. All things that can suffer. Only when we have done this can we truly consider ourselves moral beings with any kind of consistency.

And to allow for a quick tangent, here we also find another insidious and harmful result of religiosity. Religion puts absolute moral rules on things not based in reality, but on arbitrary ideas that can be manipulated and controlled by whoever or whatever is seen as having religious authority. Religion does not give us morals, it takes them out of our hands and replaces them with false morals that someone in power, someone with an agenda can use to their advantage.

The genes of our ancestors may have benefited their likelihood of getting copied via the promotion of rape, but that might not be the case anymore. Our environment has changed because we (or our memes?) have altered it by creating societies. I surmise that maybe since it is nearly universally agreed that rape is "bad," it is no longer very advantageous. This might be so only because our social structure does not allow it. Those who commit rape today are not necessarily more likely to pass on their genes, especially if they are caught and held accountable for their crimes, we hope to prevent them from ever doing such a thing again. (We may still be far from it now, but that is at least the goal we should strive for.) And in an age when we have greater control over our reproduction, this all but demolishes the genetic advantages of rape. Of course, by 'reproductive control' I mean the female right to an abortion; women having control over whether or not they want to allow the further development of a blastocyst inside themselves, including one conceived by rape. For many reasons, making abortion an inherent right of every woman is another positive movement in limiting the amount of suffering in the world, despite what people might tell you whose sense of morality has been skewed and mangled by mythology/religion. I think it is also safe to say that we now have reached a point along our path as a species where eating meat is not advantageous to gene-copying either. Protein is so plentiful, the problem of not getting enough of it is virtually nonexistent, rather our risk today seems to be getting too much. Or at the very least, too much of other stuff that tends to be found in high-protein foods. It has become apparent that vegetarians are healthier than their meat-eating counterparts in modern society. Of course, the healthier you are, the better able you are to pass on those genes, generally speaking.

There is no reason that the murder of animals for the purpose of pleasing our taste buds shouldn't be treated as a deep moral negative in modern society, like rape is, given that we can agree upon one thing: it is bad to cause suffering. It's not within the scope of this already meandering post to get into the definition of what "bad" is and whether or not it is entirely relative. But if you agree that rape is bad because it causes suffering, so too is torturing and killing animals for any reason beyond absolute necessity.

To refrain from killing and eating sentient life is both moral and genetic evolution.