by Scott Adams
“Why would God want to mislead us?”
“If God exists, his motives are certainly unfathomable. No one knows why he grants free will, or why he cares about human souls, or why pain and suffering are necessary parts of life.”
“The one thing I know about God’s motives is that he must love us, right?” I wasn’t convinced of this myself, given all the problems in the world, but I was curious about how he would respond.
“Love? Do you mean love in the way you understand it as a human?”
“Well, not exactly, but basically the same thing. I mean, love is love.”
“A brain surgeon would tell you that a specific part of the brain controls the ability to love. If it’s damaged, people are incapable of love, incapable of caring about others.”
“So?”
“So, isn’t it arrogant to think that the love generated by our little brains is the same thing that an omnipotent being experiences? If you were omnipotent, why would you limit yourself to something that could be reproduced by a little clump of neurons?”
I shifted my opinion to better defend it. “We must feel something similar to God’s type of love, but not the same way God feels it.”
“What does it mean to feel something similar to the way God feels? Is that like saying a pebble is similar to the sun because both are round?” he responded.
“Maybe God designed our brains to feel love the same way he feels it. He could do that if he wanted to.”
“So you believe God wants things. And he loves things, similar to the way humans do. Do you also believe God experiences anger and forgiveness?”
“That’s part of the package,” I said, committing further to my side of the debate.
“So God has a personality, according to you, and it is similar to what humans experience?”
“I guess so.”
“What sort of arrogance assumes God is like people?” he asked.
“Okay, I can accept the idea that God doesn’t have a personality exactly like people. Maybe we just assume God has a personality because it’s easier to talk about it that way. But the important point is that something had to create reality. It’s too well-designed to be an accident.”
“Are you saying you believe in God because there are no other explanations?” he asked.
“That’s a big part of it.”
“If a stage magician makes a tiger disappear and you don’t know how the trick could be done without real magic, does that make it real magic?”
“That’s different. The magician knows how it’s done and other magicians know how it’s done. Even the magician’s assistant knows how it’s done. As long as someone knows how it’s done, I can feel confident that it isn’t real magic. I don’t personally need to know how it’s done,” I said.
“If someone very wise knew how the world was designed without God’s hand, could that person convince you that God wasn’t involved?”
“In theory, yes. But a person with that much knowledge doesn’t exist.”
“To be fair, you can only be sure that you don’t know whether that person exists or not.”
God’s Free Will
“Does God have free will?” he asked.
“Obviously he does,” I said. It was the most confidence I had felt so far in this conversation. “I’ll admit there’s some ambiguity about whether human beings have free will, but God is omnipotent. Being omnipotent means you can do anything you want. If God didn’t have free will, he wouldn’t be very omnipotent.”
“Indeed. And being omnipotent, God must be able to peer into his own future, to view it in all its perfect detail.”
“Yeah, I know. You’re going to say that if he sees his own future, then his choices are predetermined. Or, if he can’t see the future, then he’s not omnipotent.”
“Omnipotence is trickier than it seems,” he said.
Science
“I see where you’re going with this,” I said. “You’re an atheist. You think science has the answers and you think religious people are all delusional.”
“Let’s talk about science for a moment,” he replied.
I was relieved. I liked science. It was my favorite subject in school. Religion made me uncomfortable. It’s better not to think too much about religion, but science was made for thinking. It was based on facts.
“Do you know a lot about science?” I asked.
“Almost nothing,” he said.
I figured this would be a short conversation, and it was just as well because my lunch hour was running out.
“Consider magnets,” the old man said. “If you hold two magnets near each other, they are attracted. Yet there is nothing material connecting them.”
“Yes there is,” I corrected. “There’s a magnetic field. You can see it when you do that experiment with the metal shavings on a piece of paper. You hold a magnet under the paper and the shavings all organize along magnetic lines. That’s the magnetic field.”
“So you have a word for it. It’s a ‘field,’ you say. But you can’t get a handful of this thing for which you have a name. You can’t fill a container with a magnetic field and take it with you. You can’t cut it in pieces. You can’t block its power.”
“You can’t block it? I didn’t know that.”
“You can alter a magnetic field by adding other magnetic material, but there is no non-magnetic material you can put between two magnets to block them. This ‘field’ of yours is strange stuff. We can see its effect, and we can invent a name for it, but it doesn’t exist in any physical form. How can something that doesn’t exist in physical form have influence over the things that do?”
“Maybe it has physical form but it’s small and we can’t see it. That’s possible. Maybe there are tiny magnetrons or something,” I said, making up a word.
“Consider gravity,” the old man continued, oblivious to my creative answer. “Gravity is also an unseen force that cannot be blocked by any object. It reaches across the entire universe and connects all things, yet it has no physical form.”
“I think Einstein said it was the warping of space-time by massive objects,” I said, dredging up a memory of a magazine article I read years ago.
“Indeed, Einstein did say that. And what does that mean?”
“It means that space is bent, so when objects seem to be attracted to each other, it’s just that they’re traveling in the shortest direction through bent space.”
“Can you imagine bent space?” he asked.
“No, but just because I can’t imagine it doesn’t mean it’s not true. You can’t argue with Einstein.”
He looked away. I figured he was either annoyed at my answer or just resting. It turned out he was pausing to gather energy. He drew a breath into his tiny lungs and began.
“Scientists often invent words to fill the holes in their understanding. These words are meant as conveniences until real understanding can be found. Sometimes understanding comes and the temporary words can be replaced with words that have more meaning. More often, however, the patch words will take on a life of their own and no one will remember that they were only intended to be placeholders.
“For example, some physicists describe gravity in terms of ten dimensions all curled up. But those aren’t real words—just placeholders, used to refer to parts of abstract equations. Even if the equations someday prove useful, it would say nothing about the existence of other dimensions. Words such as dimension and field and infinity are nothing more than conveniences for mathematicians and scientists. They are not descriptions of reality, yet we accept them as such because everyone is sure someone else knows what the words mean.”
I listened. Rocking, mildly stunned.
“Have you heard of string theory?” he asked.
“Sort of.”
“String theory says that all of physical reality—from gravity to magnetism to light—can be explained in one grand theory that involves tiny, string-shaped, vibrating objects. String theory has produced no
useful results. It has never been proven by experiment, yet thousands of physicists are dedicating their careers to it on the faith that it smells right.”
“Maybe it is right.” It seemed like my turn to say something.
“Every generation of humans believed it had all the answers it needed, except for a few mysteries they assumed would be solved at any moment. And they all believed their ancestors were simplistic and deluded. What are the odds that you are the first generation of humans who will understand reality?”
“I don’t think the odds are bad. Everything has to happen for a first time. You were around to see computers invented and to see space travel. Maybe we’ll be the first for this string theory.”
“Computers and rocket ships are examples of inventions, not of understanding,” he said. “All that is needed to build machines is the knowledge that when one thing happens, another thing happens as a result. It’s an accumulation of simple patterns. A dog can learn patterns. There is no ‘why’ in those examples. We don’t understand why electricity travels. We don’t know why light travels at a constant speed forever. All we can do is observe and record patterns.”
Where Is Free Will Located?
“Where is your free will?” the old man asked. “Is it part of your brain, or does it emanate from someplace outside your body and somehow control your actions?”
“A few minutes ago I would have said I knew the answer to that question. But you’re making me doubt some of my assumptions.”
“Doubting is good,” he said. “But tell me where you think free will comes from.”
“I’ll say it comes from my brain. I mean, it’s a function of my brain. I don’t have a better answer.”
“Your brain is like a machine in many ways, isn’t it?” he asked.
It sounded like a trick question, so I gave myself some wiggle room. “The brain isn’t exactly like a machine.”
“The brain is composed of cells and neurons and chemicals and pathways and electrical activity that all conform to physical laws. When part of your brain is stimulated in one specific way, could it respond any way it wants, or would it always respond in one specific way?”
“There’s no way to test that. No one knows.”
“Then you believe we can only know things that have been tested?” he asked.
“I’m not saying that.”
“Then you’re not saying anything, are you?”
It felt that way.
“So where is free will?” he asked again.
“It must involve the soul.” I didn’t have a better answer.
“Soul? Where is the soul located?”
“It’s not located anywhere. It just is.”
“Then the soul is not physical in nature, according to you,” he said.
“I guess not. Otherwise someone probably would have found physical evidence of it,” I said.
“So you believe that the soul, which is not physical, can influence the brain, which is physical?”
“I’ve never thought about it in those terms, but I guess I do believe that.”
“Do you believe the soul can influence other physical things, like a car or a watch?”
“No, I think souls only affect brains.” I was crawling out on a limb with lead weights strapped to my belt.
“Can your soul influence other people’s brains, or does it know which brain is yours?”
“My soul must know which brain is mine, otherwise I’d be influenced by other souls and I wouldn’t have free will.”
He paused. “Your soul, according to you, knows the difference between your brain and everything else that is not your brain. And it never makes a mistake in that regard. That means your soul has structure and rules, like a machine.”
“It must,” I agreed.
“If the soul is the source of free will, then it must be weighing alternatives and making decisions.”
“That’s its job.”
“But that’s what brains do. Why would you need a soul to do what a brain can do?” he asked.
“Maybe the soul has free will and the brain doesn’t,” I said. “Or the soul causes your brain to have free will. Or the soul is smarter or more moral than the brain. I don’t know.” I tried to put my fingers in as many holes as possible.
“If the soul’s actions are not controlled by rules, that can only mean the soul acts randomly. On the other hand, if your soul is guided by rules, which in turn guide you, then you have no free will. You are programmed. There is no in between; your life is either random or predetermined. Which is it?”
I wasn’t prepared to believe I had no control over my own life. “Maybe God is guiding my soul,” I said.
“If God is guiding your soul and your soul is guiding your brain, then you are nothing more than a puppet of God. You don’t really have free will in that case, do you?”
I tried again. “Maybe God is guiding my soul in a sort of directional way, but it’s up to me to figure out the exact steps to take.”
“That sounds as if God is giving you some sort of an intelligence test. If you make the right choices, good things happen to your soul. Is that what you’re saying?”
“It’s not about intelligence, it’s about morality,” I said.
“Morality?”
“Yes, morality.” I felt I was making a good point even though I didn’t know what it was.
“Is your brain involved in making moral decisions or do those decisions get made someplace outside your body?” he asked.
I groaned.
Genuine Belief
I needed reinforcements. “Look,” I said, “four billion people believe in some sort of God and free will. They can’t all be wrong.”
“Very few people believe in God,” he replied.
I didn’t see how he could deny the obvious. “Of course they do. Billions of people believe in God.”
The old man leaned toward me, resting a blanketed elbow on the arm of his rocker.
“Four billion people say they believe in God, but few genuinely believe. If people believed in God, they would live every minute of their lives in support of that belief. Rich people would give their wealth to the needy. Everyone would be frantic to determine which religion was the true one. No one could be comfortable in the thought that they might have picked the wrong religion and blundered into eternal damnation, or bad reincarnation, or some other unthinkable consequence. People would dedicate their lives to converting others to their religions.
“A belief in God would demand one hundred percent obsessive devotion, influencing every waking moment of
this brief life on earth. But your four billion so-called believers do not live their lives in that fashion, except for a few. The majority believe in the usefulness of their beliefs—an earthly and practical utility—but they do not believe in the underlying reality.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “If you asked them, they’d say they believe.”
“They say that they believe because pretending to believe is necessary to get the benefits of religion. They tell other people that they believe and they do believer-like things, like praying and reading holy books. But they don’t do the things that a true believer would do, the things a true believer would have to do.
“If you believe a truck is coming toward you, you will jump out of the way. That is belief in the reality of the truck. If you tell people you fear the truck but do nothing to get out of the way, that is not belief in the truck. Likewise, it is not belief to say God exists and then continue sinning and hoarding your wealth while innocent people die of starvation. When belief does not control your most important decisions, it is not belief in the underlying reality, it is belief in the usefulness of believing.”
“Are you saying God doesn’t exist?” I asked, trying to get to the point.
“I’m saying that people claim to believe in God, but most don’t literally believe. They only act as though they believe because there are earthly benefits in doing so. They create a
delusion for themselves because it makes them happy.”
“So you think only the atheists believe their own belief?” I asked.
“No. Atheists also prefer delusions,” he said.
“So according to you, no one believes anything that they say they believe.”
“The best any human can do is to pick a delusion that helps him get through the day. This is why people of different religions can generally live in peace. At some level, we all suspect that other people don’t believe their own religion any more than we believe ours.”
I couldn’t accept that. “Maybe the reason we respect other religions is that they all have a core set of beliefs in common. They only differ in the details.”
“Jews and Muslims believe that Christ isn’t the Son of God,” he countered. “If they are right, then Christians are mistaken about the core of their religion. And if the Jews or the Christians or the Muslims have the right religion, then the Hindus and Buddhists who believe in reincarnation are wrong. Would you call those details?”
“I guess not,” I confessed.
“At some level of consciousness, everyone knows that the odds of picking the true religion—if such a thing exists—are nil.”
Road Maps
I felt like a one-legged man balanced on a high fence. I could keep hopping along looking for an easy way down, or I could just jump now and take my bruises. I decided to jump.
“What’s your belief, Mr. Avatar?”
The old man rocked a few times before responding. “Let’s say that you and I decide to travel separately to the same place. You have a map that is blue and I have a map that is green. Neither map shows all the possible routes, but both maps show an acceptable—yet different—route to the destination. If we both take our trips and return safely, we would spread the word of our successful maps to others. I would say, with complete conviction, that my green map was perfect, and I might warn people to avoid any other sort of map. You would feel the same conviction about your blue map.
