Religion & Science Can Co-Exist
Atheists are confused.
Most of the atheists that I've met in my life are fairly well intending and civil people who are simply fighting against dogmatism, superstition and particularly that pseudo-science which delivers harm onto innocents. And I wholeheartedly support this endeavor of theirs.
But surely the contemporary atheist movements seem very concerned with trying to civilize the ignorants using the presumed monopoly over wisdom reserved exclusively with them (atheists).
Therefore, let us unambiguously mention the complaints that atheists have.
It is downright stupid to believe any funny ideas about how the universe works from scriptures and holy books.
Religion is dogmatic and prevents people from thinking outside the box.
Rituals might be placebo.
And those are the ideas and movements that we tend to challenge in this piece.
When I was young, I equated atheism with rationality and proudly questioned every religious ritual as stupidity and ignorance on part of those who indulge in it. Like every other proud atheist, I used to laugh at the funny ideas about how the universe works mentioned in random scriptures and holy books.
Since the moment my mind began to grasp the essence of computational philosophy, why and how human societies behave and organize the way they do, began to make sense more thoroughly.
Yes! It wasn't a deep dive into psychology or sociology that enlightened me, rather it was taking a completely computational view of the universe. The same principles of the Turing machine that run your computers, is precisely what opened my mind to human behavior.
As I grew older I realized that atheists and theists are, more often than not, simply talking past each other. I've since maintained that atheists are merely confused as to why theists and theism exist even in a free country.
Religion in a Free Vs Theocratic Country
It is imperative to draw the distinction between why would someone follow a religion in a free country versus a non-free one. If you are living in a de-facto religious State, for example an Islamic or Communist State, then you, for most part, don't really get enough mental and physical freedom to opt-out of your regular religious environment. Needless to mention some of these countries, like United Kingdom, might have a State religion but may anyway go on to give phenomenal freedom to their residents to opt-out of religious institutions. But those are exceptions. For the sake of this piece, we'll consider hard-line religious States to make the distinction more clear.
Religious States protect their cults by building social structures and hierarchies around you to ensure that you can’t opt-out of the cult, or try to unsubscribe from the group mentality. And in case you take that initiative, you face ostracism or boycotts.
For example, in an Islamic country your office having Namaz (Islamic prayer) breaks/timings might push you to join the rest of the colleagues in the prayer hall, instead of staying back at your desk and inviting needless commentary or grooming.
Why follow religion?
In my understanding, experience and wisdom, the fundamental reason why someone who declares themselves as active members of a religious community, even in a free country, mostly equate regularly following certain traditions and daily rituals as being "religious." They do not care about the intriguing, or rather "funny," ideas about their god given purpose in life, or how the universe was created. This is where I figure is the fundamental mismatch or lack or coherence between how atheists think of theists, versus the perception or understanding that theists have of their own behaviors.
For the sake of scientific skepticism let's question, "why believe in traditions and rituals as well?" I'll come to answer this in a moment.
Take the example of India. I am quite certain that most Hindus do not go to bed every night thinking about the model of Turiyam from Mandukya Upanishad. Most Hindus don't even know what that is. They haven't read the Upanishads or most of their scriptures. Nor do they plan to. Neither do most Muslims think about the nothingness in the universe before the big bang, in their daily lives. But a good portion of them do recite a random prayer every morning or visit the nearby temple to perform some random ritual. This “religiosity“ is mostly temporary and limited in that sense.
But don’t these theists believe in the funny ideas about how the universe was created, and will be destroyed, as mentioned in their scriptures? Some of them do. Others would like to. But do they? We generally find most of these theists living their daily lives fairly rationally and in reasonable agreement with modern science. From accepting vaccines during the pandemic, to advanced surgeries on their loved ones, to sophisticated use of other gadgets. But as soon as someone questions their ideas about the universe as mentioned in the scriptures they grow defensive. They want those revelations to be true if you challenged them. Because they derive their identities from those groups/communities who have consensus on these ideas. But most of these guys can be talked out of them with humility and decency.
Mostly in the same fashion you will become defensive if someone blamed your parents of fraud or theft. But even you can be convinced and humbly talked into it if I decently explained the situation to you with evidence without attempting to gaslight you.
Coming back to the question about the “need” to follow religions, let's assume we are hit with a once in a lifetime pandemic, which we recently were. And we have these “priests,” also called “doctors,” ordained by reputed and prestigious institutions like AIIMS in Delhi, or Standford Med in the United States. These, so called “priests” must not necessarily be the finest brains in the country, but it works as long as they are “better than most.”
Remember that I'm not an epidemiologist or a doctor. So, it's a subconscious decision on my part to simply side with these priests until I find a more sophisticated functional alternative. And this is where the belief of theists in the capability, or excellence, of these priests comes from. Aligning with “someone who seems to know the answer” is better than accepting fate, and by extension, defeat.
Surely, the poets and intellectuals can go on to argue that the latter is more desirable and courageous but that is not what a poverty stricken person faced with a deadly pandemic is privileged enough to choose. And most problems for which theists turn to the gods and goddesses are equally, if not more, deadly.
And a *functional alternative* is precisely what Atheists can't provide against theism.
Where Atheists Fail
People like to build groups and be active members of communities because it brings emotional support, sense of belonging and mental stability when you are around your own ones.
Atheists are incompetent when it comes to actually convincing theists about the essence or value in becoming outcasts. Or betraying their packs. This becomes especially challenging when in case of some religious groups, even attempts of unsubscribing from consensus or shared belief can bring severe punishments. Or, purely by standards of religious scriptures, come with severe risks including eternal damnation, social ostracism, etc.
All well intending atheists must understand that sticking with the pack and siding with the priests is a perfectly reasonable and rational stance to take. At least, subconsciously. The unnatural move would be to become an outlier. But why? Remember, the terminal goal of every agent is to stay alive, and community support augments your chance at survival. And who says that? My computational view of the universe. I'll explain more about this in an upcoming piece that I'm writing.
Therefore, a more reasonable and non-violent way to slowly and steadily take dogmatic religion away from society is to carefully build functional alternatives for every illegitimate practice that you believe theists engage in.
Quick example: In India, there is a prevalent practice wherein right before a couple gets married their parents try to get their horoscopes matched. The actual practice is termed "janam kundli milwana."
When they don't match, the superstitious parents are known to force their kids into all kinds of gimmickry and dogmatic rituals to try and get their horoscopes "corrected." Given how emotionally complicated it becomes for parents to arrange the correct match for their child, they often submit to such superstitious practices.
But since a few years, a seemingly simple functional alternative as emerged to find faster matches based on numerous parameters, including horoscopes. That is matrimonial sites.
Given how ridiculously easy and convenient it became to find faster matches without compromising on your beliefs, the prevalence of engaging in dogmatic, and often harmful, rituals to "ward off the bad omen" has also gone down drastically.
Functional alternatives make cultures evolve. And cultures are important.
A lot of atheists are now sadly turning anti-culture. I admit that not all cultures are equal, and to forcefully equate them is the beginning of political correctness. But the solution is to make backward cultures evolve, not dissolve. And this can definitely not be achieved by demeaning or gaslighting people into submission or existential crisis.
But why are cultures important?
Cultures are operating systems of a civilization. And every nation must aim to become a civilization. Not everyone can, but they must try. Cultures sustain interactions between every agent, edge and reference of the society. Cultures calibrate trust in your society. High trust societies need lower censorship. And vice versa. People who grow up in absence of captivating cultures often turn to cult-like spirituality. They feel they have finally arrived in the group of enlightened ones, without realizing that this spirituality is just a phantom limb in their mind to fill the void of culture. This is common not just for Osho style wannabe monks meditating in dense forests, but also young rebels mentally kidnapped by experienced, but mostly obsessed, public intellectuals of our societies. But let’s not deep dive into the dynamics and importance of culture over here. That is reserved for another post.
As many problems as you believe religion births, for most part of the world, it still acts as a social anti-virus. You take religion away, you dissolve the culture in the process, and you are leaving a fertile ground open for other untested, and often chaotic, systems and models to be thrusted and experimented upon you.
But why exactly is this undesirable? Because it’s inefficient.
Naval Ravikant was absolutely correct in saying that individuals are smarter than organizations. What he didn’t add further is that civilizations are smarter than both organizations and individuals.
Institutions designed by civilizations go down in wars. New ones are built over the rubble. With modest enough upgrades. Making these institutions so sophisticated than what could’ve been built/enforced by individuals or organizations within their limited lifetime.
Exploration Vs Exploitation
In the religion of Marxism, the heaven is Communism. Since, this heaven has to be achieved within your lifetime and here on earth, it’s much more violent in trying to rearrange the social structures, and therefore, deems it acceptable to draw more blood. These temptations go down in religions where heavens are achieved, not built, after death. And goes further down when there are no heavens to be achieved. Like the schools of eastern philosophy.
Being “religious“ is not something exclusive to only the followers of State recognized religions. Even the self-declared atheists might be fairly religious on a number of beliefs. In the interest of scientific skepticism, let’s clinically investigate precisely how does one calibrate between being intrigued by the descriptions of how the universe came into existence as revealed by scriptures versus taking the hard-line “my way or the highway“ position.
This is a simple reinforcement learning problem. The agent i.e. you, simply needs a carefully built, or transplanted, reward function that optimizes it’s model towards the pre-decided terminal goal. Carefully explore, or branch out to, a different worldview or exploit the available worldview to move ahead. In other words, strategically decide which calculation can be compromised and which ones to double-down upon. This is not impossible. Just a lot of work to do.
The nature of your relationship with your religious beliefs need not always be dogmatic. This is especially true for followers of eastern schools of philosophy relative to the western ones. A lot of truly gifted minds, as well as relatively unknown but fairly sensible ones, often were very religious.
When questioned about where he gets his theorems and ideas from, the mathematical genius Ramanujan famously pronounced that his devi (goddess) opens the doors to another universe. It’s possible he might have perceived his awareness about his “self“ as his Goddess but with some uncontrollable levers on his perception of reality, which he gave credit to.
The Pakistani nuclear physicist, also the first ever Muslim to win the Nobel Prize, Dr. Abdus Salam was very religious. And he even refused to refute the ideas in the Quran. It’s possible that the Dr. was merely intrigued by the possibility of the Quanic ideas of being true, and that powered his interest in science.
Understanding the God
The idea that you can live in someone else’s mind and shift your base from one mind to another is what represents the god. They are mental constructs. Like the “self.“ There are broadly 3 kinds of gods that I’ve realized in decreasing order of their respective follower-ship worldwide.
The Self God
Defined as the self that spans multiple minds.
Euphemism for shared beliefs that members of a community have consensus on to not question or unsubscribe from. Often in exchange for getting material and organizational benefits from the community.
Spiritual God
Benevolent and loving.
Always on your side.
Represents a conscious universe.
Lives inside your mind. Not above the clouds.
Generally chosen as a phantom limb by those who need emotional support and a feeling of belonging.
Humanized Archetypes
All of the above.
Represent the form of specifications and extremes of human psychology and it’s boundaries.
Stable. Not crazy.
Example: Indian or Japanese or Greek Gods.
Not necessary to exist, but treated as if they exist.
Hardcore God
Gives strict orders. Can be rude.
Has strong ideas about individual morality.
Activates and controls the levers of chastising and commendation to optimize the functioning of society as per His fancies.
Can be fascist.
Mental Hyper-computation
Atheists pretend to engage in quantum computation. Trying to understand the functioning of matter. But are now increasingly engaging in mental hyper-computation. Like Geometry. You start with a single function and keep implementing it until it starts generating patterns. If the patterns don’t fit the substrate of reality as visible to them, atheists either start panicking or find refuge in infusing their models with emotional references to forcefully have them make sense. They aren’t trying to investigate the nature of relationship that theists have with their individual gods, rather begin with a prefixed answer of “irrationality“ or “stupidity“ and then try to arrange the epistemological tree that emerges out of discussions to coincide with their answers.
If you aren’t the priest, then you can’t dictate.
Let’s get this straight. Atheists are in no position to dictate what ideas am I allowed to have about how the universe works, because they aren’t the priests themselves. I’ve often found quantum physicists to be more intrigued by the ideas of teleportation and telepathy. Ideas that even theists may find outrageous.
But that is the point. Ambitious ones and helpless ones, both have strong beliefs. If you are not a quantum physicist, then you are in no position to advise me precisely why I shouldn’t pursue teleportation.
Rituals Might Be Placebos
Yes, they might be. So, what? Whether it’s Muslims celebrating Muharram to relieve themselves of sins, or Hindus bathing in the Holy Ganges. Without investigating this psychologically, or on an epistemological level, I often end this argument with dismissal. Even if a placebo gets their job done, what is your problem?
Religious Texts
I’ve long maintained that dismissing or ignoring religious texts, both the supposedly revealed ones as well as the ones written by followers afterwards, serves no purpose if you intend to critically understand and evolve your cultures.
Everyone must read all the religious texts they can get their hands on, and find time for. Across religions. Not just of the one they were born in.
And read them trying to understand how the most reasonable leaders or orators of their times were able to convince a clearly unreasonable audience into follower-ship or join the ranks of believers for the sake of “higher good.” Keep this in mind even if you don’t care about the teachings in these texts.
Understanding and learning these patterns of leader-to-follower dialogues, and vice versa, will enlighten you more about the behavior of present day theists, as well as uncovering patterns of social hierarchy and interactions in our society.
Religious texts are not terminal in nature. Merely instrumental. They can teach you a lot, even if you don’t agree with them.
In the words of Marc Andreessen, you ideally want to be a society with strong opinions, but loosely held. Not strong opinions that are strongly held.
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