Examining Paradigms

This post will be a bit stream of consciousness, but who cares, eh?  I finished reading “Timothy Leary” which is now the definitive biography of the once Harvard professor turned self proclaimed acid prophet.  It was a good read.  The book really drove home for me just how much we all crave transcendence.  I feel like that was partly what I was craving during substance experimentation during my teen years and during my religious zealotry during my late teens to twenties.  The problem that I have found with all “transcendent” experiences is that all you are left with is the experience.  The experience is poignant, exquisite and very convincing, but it seems like its use is not very explainable.

Arthur Koestler said the following about one of his trips with Leary: “There’s no wisdom there.  I solved the secret of the universe last night, but this morning I forgot what it was.  There is no quick and easy path to wisdom.  Sweat and toil are the price of knowledge.”

Koestler’s thoughts on his hallucinogenic experience summarize my feelings on psychedelics as well.

However, I feel like the ambiguity of transcendental experience can be applied to religion as well.  I had a very earthshaking “spiritual awakening” in my teens.  The experience was potent, lucid, and pretty damn emotional, yet I am not sure what knowledge I gained from it.  I remember a friend asking me one time, “and what did you learn from that?”  I was left a little confused because even though I had the experience, the experience could not be articulated well.  Any conclusions that I drew from that experience were largely driven by my religious upbringing and not necessarily from the experience itself.

What am I saying?  I am not sure, but I guess I am saying that many of us yearn for transcendence, but that the transcendence, although it feels good, may not really mean anything.  How’s that for cynicism?

I just finished the book entitled Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali.   It is an autobiography of one woman’s childhood in various countries with a prominent Muslim population and her flee to Holland where she takes control of her life.  She does an incredible job at outlining the differences between Islam from country to country, ethnicity to ethnicity, and tribe to tribe.  The story is excellently told and empowering.  Even though I do not venture to directly compare other religions to fundamental Islam, I do feel that anyone who was raised in an environment where scripture was interpreted as literal and abandonment of religion could cause shunning by family and community will be able to relate to Ayaan’s story on a cursory yet powerful level.

She eventually abandons Islam but details her journey out, and the cognitive dissonance that initiated this journey.  For anyone who has dealt with religious paradox, contradiction and cognitive dissonance, this book is for you.  Ayaan ends up making a short film with a man named Theo van Gogh who is shot, stabbed and has a letter impaled to his chest addressed to Ayaan as a result of the film.

This film was named Submission Part I

I am left conflicted by books like these.  We are constantly told that Islam is a religion of peace.  Yet Ayaan, a once devout Muslim, is a strong opponent of this statement.  Furthermore, when I read the Qur’an, I find plenty of passages that justify violence and terrorism.

The following experience is a perfect example of when someone falls into the petitio principii fallacy, more commonly known as begging the question.

To maintain the anonymity of the participants, I have changed all the names in the story. The story is also condensed and summarized. This is not an actual word for word account.

Who is who:
Kate = my colleague with whom I am conversing
Susan = a colleague with whom we are annoyed with often
Marie = a colleague that is always extremely annoyed with Susan

Kate and I were recently discussing some of the people within our professional circle and Kate said, “you know Marie came up to me and told me that she just celebrated her tenth anniversary of meditating twice daily.”

“Wow, that is impressive dedication”, I replied with sincerity.

“You know, I would think that someone who practiced meditation for ten years would be much more tolerant about other people. Marie is always extremely irritated with Susan, and I would think that a serious meditator would be much more relaxed about it.”

“Why? Are you into meditation, Kate?”

“Yes. In fact, I am trying to meditate every morning, and I look forward to the day when I will be able to sit in a 2 hour trance. It will be awesome.”

After pondering Kate’s response, I replied “well maybe you should be less critical about the practitioner and more critical about the practice itself.”

“You are right, maybe Marie is just not meditating correctly and that is why she is easily irritated with Susan.”

“No. I mean maybe meditation is not all that it is cracked up to be. Maybe meditation does not work.”

Kate replied briskly. “No, meditation definitely works.”

“Kate, I really think that maybe this is cause to question the validity of the claims made by practitioners of meditation. Maybe, meditation just doesn’t work as well as some say. Why do you think it works so well? Shouldn’t you be skeptical of its value?”

“It will work. I am sure of it. People say it works and I am going to have success.”

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Begging the question is stating a “truth” and assuming the truth of that “truth” without using any other evidence to support it. The above dialogue is a classic example and it irritated me. Why not engage in skeptical dialogue about the claims of a methodology that often purports transcendence and spiritual enlightenment?

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and begging the question is not providing any evidence.

I have been a long time discovery and history channel fan, but it seems that more and more the are producing horrible shows about aliens visiting earth, ghosts and other things that fuel popular irrational thought. While watching a history channel show that was discussing the “possibility” that aliens assisted primitive cultures with building the pyramids and other intriguing, early architecture, I realized that most of the distasteful programs fall into the argumentum ad ignoratiam fallacy.

There are a few different forms to this fallacy, but two common ones are, 1) arguing the truth of something because it can not be disproved, and 2) jumping to an untested conclusion because you are ignorant to the source of something.

Examples:
1) Statement: Aliens built the pyramids.

No they did not, there is no evidence that points to aliens

Well you can not prove that they did not build the pyramids, so they did. – argumentum ad ignorantiam

2) Statement: There is a funny noise in the cellar at night, and I do not know what it is.  The noise must be a ghost. – argumentum ad ignorantiam.

It really bothers me that shows that should be promoting good science are just feeding irrationality in the general public.  One of the people on the mentioned (aliens and pyramids) show said something along the lines of, “What I like about the aliens hypothesis is that it forces us to think.”  Au contraire my friend, it prevents you from thinking.  It creates an absence of thought when complex ideas are needed.  It is a cop out.

The truth is that ancient civilizations are much more complex than some give them credit.  Do we have the answers for all of the architectural and astronomical mysteries within these ancient cultures?  No we do not.  But saying, “this ______ is complex, aliens must have helped” gets us no closer to finding the answer to these ancient puzzles.

When we are confronted with mystery and complexity, we need to form testable hypotheses and test these hypotheses to approach the truth.  Blaming complexity on aliens or the supernatural is a cop out, generally untestable, and is not productive.  Unfortunately popular television is not helping promote critical thinking in society.  Shame on them.

There has recently been much controversy dealing with HBO’s hit show Big Love and the possible depiction of portions of the LDS temple ceremony.

I have a variety of feelings about the issue:

I understand the desire that Mormons have to keep their rituals secret from public scrutiny and discussion.  I feel that a sense of privacy and the sense that they share something of “their own” adds to group cohesion and helps them take their rituals more seriously.  This desire to have secret ceremonies is shared by many other groups, which include religious groups as well as secular and fraternal. However, many Mormons (and people in general) display an enormous double standard about these things.  They are eager to discover other people’s secret things.  They watch tribal ritual on the National Geographic channel like it is perfectly ok to scrutinize others’ religious ceremonies.  They were fascinated about Opus Dei when they were Hollywoodized in The Da Vinci Code, and found their use of the cilice belt intriguing.  Who would not be excited and curious to discover the secret ceremony of the Skull and Bones fraternity, or who chooses to turn off the history channel when it reenacts sacred Egyptian funeral rites or when it speaks about the Hajj?  The issue always arises when a personal secret is revealed.  This is why so many Mormons are angry.  Their secret is being publicly displayed, and they feel like their secret is too sacred for public display.  I think that this sentiment is shared by many.  Humanity finds it painful when personal things are put under the public microscope, but we are quick to look down the eyepiece of the microscope at other people’s personal things.

I personally find Big Loves decision to display Mormon temple ceremony as insensitive, yet I do not think that there is anything inherently wrong with it.

For Mormons who are offended by the public display of temple secrets I have a few points of advice:

1)  Many of your secrets are really borrowed/stolen Masonic secrets, so you shouldn’t feel too possessive of them.

2) Transcripts of the temple ceremony are already available online to whomever wants to look at them.  I find LDSendowment.org most useful.

3) HBO isn’t the first television program to discuss temple topics on air.  I saw a Cold Case episode that displayed a Mormon wearing garments and a Law and Order that showed garment symbols in detail.

4) Do you get equally upset when other people religious rites are put on public display?

I understand why many Mormons are upset about this, but I think that the larger question is, should religious rites in general be fair game for public discussion?  I think that the answer is yes, and that even though it may be uncomfortable for those people being scrutinized that they need to realize that if it offends them; the best solution would be for them not to watch it.