Struggling with Meaninglessness

On one fine day, I got a mini-Eureka while playing with my Rubik’s cube (which is my daily toy). I realized when I twist one block away, it doesn’t just affect the front face but even the top face, left face, right face and bottom face will all be affected. For instance, based on the diagram on the right, if I turn the white face clockwise, the blue and red face will be messed up along with the other 2 faces on the other side. And this is just a single move. If I move random blocks 4-5 times, the entire cube will be pretty scrambled. In other words, to solve Rubik’s cube you can’t fix it by just looking at one face but you also have to take into consideration of all the other sides/faces. You got to think in 3-Dimensional.

Well, that seems pretty obvious at first. Duh. However, my way of thinking do not stop there. I always look for the ‘Essence’ or ‘Gist’ of whatever that I’ve discovered and then asked myself – ‘How do I apply this Essence to my philosophy?’. I understand that Detail tells you the small picture, but Essence show you the big picture.

So, from the Rubik’s cube, I learned that when solving a complex problem, I can’t just do one-dimensional thinking, but I also have to look from the 2nd and 3rd dimensions point of view to grasp the full picture, hence, multi-dimensional thinking.

“Hit the tree but missed the forest.”

“Hit the tree but missed the forest.” – Unknown.

This is actually not an official proverb but something I came across around 3-4 years ago in a Malaysian blog. And this quote, has then changed the way of how I construct my thought ever since. The idea of this quote is simple yet profound – sometimes, when we try to solve a problem, we might get the small details right but in a bigger picture, it doesn’t apply to the essence of the problem. (For example – the delusion that creationist can dismiss Evolution by attacking macro-evolution). And to solve the big picture problem, we will need multi-dimensional thinking due to its complexity.

Imagine you are going for an adventure to search for the mystical ancient forest – Gugukaka forest, which the location is not known to any man. All you know is that the Gugukaka forest contains Popululu trees, and so you start searching for the forest. One day, after many years of searching, you finally found the Popululu tree, but are you sure that’s Gugukaka forest? You hit tree, but are you sure that’s the right forest? If you claim without any hesitancy that this is the right ancient forest by mere recognizing the one tree, then you are just applying one dimensional thinking.  Perhaps, other forest also do have this Popululu trees, you never know.

To understand whether it is indeed the Gugukaka forest or not, you need to grasp the essence of ‘mystical’ and ‘ancient’. If this is a mystical forest, there should not be many common inhabitants or else it wouldn’t be mystical anymore. If this is an ancient forest, it should be tricky or difficult to find or else everybody would have found this forest and it would not be ancient anymore. Or if I walk along the forest and get roasted by a phoenix or impaled by an unicorn or BBQ’ed by ogres, then I will know right away that this is a mystical forest.

You get the idea.

Atheism

There was a time when I heard someone said ‘I don’t see anything that disprove the existence of God’. Immediately, I told myself silently ‘But I, on the other hand, do not find any evidence which support God’s existence!’. Clearly, a major contradiction happens here. Looking from a simplistic point of view, since these two statements are mutually exclusive, we are basically sharing 50%-50% chances to be correct with our views. In other words, one of us has to be right, and another is downright ignorant.  At the same time I know that when tackling such question, it is not something I can solve by flipping the coin and say I Win! Or stick to my own biased beliefs and say “I’m Right and You’re Wrong!”.. By default, there’s a faith system within our psyche which trigger us to consistently believe that we are right and anyone against our beliefs are wrong. That’s why more often than not, our unconscious priority when getting into argument or debate is to ‘Win’ the argument rather than finding the truth. I’m perfectly aware of that.

Not only that, I also can’t just go and say ‘people who believe in God are idiots and totally wrong in their beliefs’ because not only this is a logical fallacy, but also very one-dimensional thinking. Therefore, I need to argue this case looking from my different dimensions point of view. I will present my argument now, so, read carefully.

In the modern world justice system, we commonly adopt the famous stance – Innocent until proven Guilty. This is not a perfect system because not every criminal who deserve punishment are in jail, but nevertheless, this is the best justice system that we could have. Something equivalent to capitalism in economics – not perfect but the best.

So, basically – You are innocent by default until there are evidences which prove you guilty. In other words, you are ‘nothing’ until evidence prove you to have/be ‘something’. Nothing until proven something.

Therefore, when it comes to arguing God’s existence, the burden of proof is not with the non-believers but with the believers. Because by default, we have to assume that there’s nothing in the sky until proven to have something. Again, this is not the perfect system to argue against mysteries but surely the best we have. ANd it appears that we have zero concrete evidence for God’s existence – Absolutely zero, or else many theologians will rush and hold this evidence to prove to everyone that God exist. But so far, theologians only argue from philosophical point of view or by interpreting doctrines. Therefore, we have to assume that God do not exist, until concretely proven to be so.

OK, hold that thought of ‘Nothing until proven Something’, because I’m now entering to another dimension. Hold tight.

Here I will want to pose a simple question – Assuming that God do exist (Abrahamic’s religion), will it be his intention to want us, all of us the human beings to recognize his existence, accept him, worship him and submit to him? I can safely assume the answer is yes and sending Jesus Christ to earth was one of his intention to do so. Now, here’s my another argument:

A God who created such massive universe and a complex thing called Life must have a great massive amount of intelligence. Let’s call it uber-intelligence. But wouldn’t a God who have uber-intelligence do not have simple common sense (that even me a mere mortal could think off) that if He reveal himself even for just a few seconds to all of us right now, JUST A FEW SECONDS, then once and for all, ONCE AND FOR ALL, there will no longer be any debates of His existence, atheist will cease to exist and you will see myself praying everyday – once and for all. He could also choose to perhaps show us some miracles as evidence, like sending down angels … or healing a lost limb … or splitting the oceans or creating 3 new moons. Whatever. Any form of evidence that even scientists and Richard Dawkins will bow down and have no choice but to say – EVIDENCE!

But we see zero miracles or evidence from God throughout the history. Zero. Now, it appears to me that it’s either there’s no God available to perform miracle or God want to keep people playing the guessing and contemplating game. I have a funny thought that if it is the latter one, then it is as if God is playing a game of Poker with me.

God : Hey mortal, do you believe me if I am to tell you that I have an Ace underneath my card? That will give me triple Aces. I can easily beat your pair 5 and pair Kings.

Man : Yo, I’m not convinced.

God : Oh yeah? All IN! $1000!

Man : *Gasp*

God : Do you believe me now? I advice you to fold. It is foolish to follow and go all-in with me, because you will only end up losing like HELL.

Man : Are you playing psychological games with me? Are you bluffing me?

God : You can try me, young one. You think you have nicer cards? Let me tell you what, my card is better than yours, any time because I’m superior. Now, either you fold and call me the God of Gambler or you can try to go all-in with me which you will certainly lose like HELL.

Man : Oh dear. *dilemma dilemma* But wouldn’t it be much easier if you have just revealed your card, show me your triple Aces and I, once and for all, will fold my cards and call you God of Gambler from today onwards? Or are you really bluffing me?

God : Reveal my cards? No way! I love to play mind games with ya. I like to keep you guessing without giving you any clarity in hints. It’s up to you to judge and interpret my words… bwahahaha~ So if you think I’m, bluffing, why not go all-in with me?

It will take plenty of writings to make this a full blown essay by incorporating topics from psychology, biology, historical and perhaps astronomy to really see the combined big picture of why God’s existence is improbable. But I will leave it short and sweet.

Conclusion: Nothing until proven something. God did not show proofs, therefore there’s nothing.

Certainly, to rebut my argument above using counter-argument like “You never know God’s intention” or “God has no reason to reveal himself” or “God has no reason to comply with your demand” will not help at all because my argument is constructed purely based on logic, step by step, piece by piece, while the rebuttals are faith-based and also, one dimensional.

You can’t compare goldfish with koi-fish .. they are 2 different class breeds.