Evolution vs. Creation – what’s the story?

It’s generally accepted that in order to subscribe to atheism, you must believe in Evolution and renounce Creationism. Despite proclaiming myself to be an atheist, I don’t see the point.

At church on my birthday, which happened to fall on a Sunday this year, I listened to an excellent sermon by Robert Fergusson on “The Theology of Ignorance”. Simply put, he explained why the correct answer to the question of how the was Earth created, for practically every Christian, is “I don’t know.” The Bible does not provide any details about The Creation, which, as Fergusson explained, means that God did not intend for His people to know.

Yet there’s still such a strong compulsion for people to probe and ask questions about the Creation, why? Because it’s a compelling story. In their rabid adherence to logic and reason, what scientists (and militant atheists) fail to understand is the power of narrative. Regardless of race or religion, creed or culture, story-telling is deeply seated in our ancestry. We are wired to understand characters and plots, and forever seek to understand things within a coherent narrative framework. Books, movies, video games, TV – all are stories to some degree. Large portions of human endeavour can be interpreted as attempts at turning facts into stories to help others understand – the super-luminous Stephen Hawking couldn’t resist the urge, authoring a sci-fi trilogy for kids called George’s Secret Key to the Universe. Dawkins, even: “The Selfish Gene”, “The Blind Watchmaker”, “The Greatest Show On Earth”, etc.

The reason why Evolution is failing to oust Creation isn’t because people aren’t getting it into their minds, it’s because the lack of a compelling narrative means that Evolution is failing to capture peoples’ imaginations. Therefore, instead of arguing whether or not Creation has a place in high-school Science classes, we should be asking ourselves why the story of Evolution isn’t being taught to kids in pre-school.

As it is today, the story of Evolution lacks the core fundamentals of a good tale: relatable characters, and a compelling plot. In the quest to keep strict boundaries between fact from fiction, those responsible have stripped away any semblance of fun and excitement. The whole process is dryly told as how man came to be, from an unbroken chain of organisms originating from the first life form that appeared in the primordial soup.

Atheism doesn’t need any more scientists trying to save us from our unenlightenment. The time is ripe for authors, poets and musicians to take charge, and turn our history from boring lists of theories, formulas and equations into something that is inviting, interesting and entertaining.

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A short addendum to the post, from an interview with Philip Pullman, author of the His Dark Materials trilogy in The Weekend Australian Review – May 1-2:

There’s also something of his grandfather in Pullman’s love of telling stories. This, for him, is how we humans come to terms with the mysteries of life, death and existence. And it is not a trivial matter; he believes fiction ranks alongside the scientific method and the symphony orchestra as our greatest discoveries.

‘”People have a hunger for stories that explain things,” he says. “That is what myths are: stories that explain where the seasons come from or where sin originates. The story of God was a story that explained a great deal, but it has now become incredible, impossible to believe.”

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This post is part of the series An Atheist In God’s Kingdom.

Is paying for news bad news?

You’ve most likely read or heard about the various news agencies starting to erect “pay walls” around their Web sites – that is, instead of being able to view the content for free, you’ll have to pay or subscribe before you can access it. The problem is that content has traditionally been delivered via a physical medium, i.e. paper, which consumers have been happy to pay to receive. As physical beings we implicitly understand when we get a wad of printed material, that it includes the total cost of its production, manufacture and delivery. Online however, the lines are blurred. We already pay for the distribution medium, i.e. internet access, so if the publisher is charging separately for the content and we get nothing more than information (which in the case of news is so fleeting and transient), we feel as if we’re being ripped off.

The Internet has devalued information. Take the Encyclopaedia Britannica for instance – once the epitome of human knowledge, now relegated to bit-player by the likes of Wikipedia. Here’s the interesting thing about Wikipedia: it is nothing more than a repository of information sourced from brains like yours and mine, written down (or typed out, as it were). Everybody knows something. It might be common knowledge such as “the sky is blue” or it might be highly specialised knowledge, but if it’s in your head it costs you nothing to access. Taking this idea further, maybe your mum works for Centrelink (hi mum!), you have a friend who is a doctor, or you attend church and know the pastor. Therefore when you have a question about government benefits, health, or religious views, you can simply ask those people and again, it costs you nothing to get that information (other than maybe time, both yours and theirs). Now imagine that you’re friends with the whole world – and you’ve got Wikipedia.

But back to news. News is one of those things where timing is everything. Also, you don’t just want to hear one side of the story – in order to make up your own mind you need to get a balanced view of the topic. Hence – and this is just a partially formed opinion – the value that Journalism adds to the ecology described above, and the areas that it should focus on, are announcing and aggregating.

• If a happening is of interest, and pertinent to you and your social circle, you’ll eventually hear about it through the grapevine. An announcement means not only that you know about it as soon as possible, but that it is as close to first-hand as possible so that it doesn’t suffer from the Chinese Whispers effect.
• For complex issues, particularly in the area of politics, people will inevitably take sides and therefore be biased. Journalism, therefore, is a unique profession in that its workers are paid to thoroughly investigate both sides of an issue and report on it in a fair and unbiased manner. (Whether that happens in reality and how successful they are is a whole other kettle of fish.)

If media outlets were successful in delivering that, I’d be happy to pay for it. Sadly most news sources today are soundly beaten by a bunch of nerds on the Internet with blogs funded through advertising. Many of these are even quite reputable now, like Ars Technica – one of my regular haunts – which was bought by Cond� Nast Publications a couple of years ago.

There’s talk of a resurgence of pay-for news as publishers look to the Apple iPad as their saviour, stitching up content deals and offering new interactive media experiences. But it’s foolish hope, since any amateur with a bit of design skill can offer a compelling interface – just look at the plethora of rags-to-riches stories brought on by the iPhone. If there’s any hope of salvation for the news industry, it’s going come from providing something greater than simply communicating information, which the Internet is already helping more and more people to do each day.

New years resolutions

I can’t put my finger on exactly when this began, but my hyperactive brain currently works in such a way that when I’m sitting in front of the computer and think of something that I need to do, I have to start it straight away regardless of whatever else I’m doing. Say I’m in the middle of answering e-mails and it occurs to me to check to see whether my Internet banking payment has gone through, I have to immediately open a browser and open the bank’s Web site. Then I remember that I have to ask a colleague about something, and I open a chat window, and so on, and so forth in this fashion until I have about 50 things open at once. (And then I complain that my computer is too slow or doesn’t have enough memory…)

My excuse is that if I don’t then I’m going to forget, but the unfortunate side effect is that these tasks in my head all cry out for attention, which makes me wonder sometimes whether this is what schizophrenia feels like. It has also all but killed my attention span, meaning every time I have to wait for a Web page to load, or a program to open, I switch over to the next window and start working on something else instead.

I’m sure this isn’t healthy.

For one thing, when I’m at home with no urgent chores or other pressing agenda I’ll almost always end up playing videogames because that’s the first thing that comes to mind to do. It might even be revealing that I tend to prefer genres that involve quests and achievements – i.e. role playing, real-time strategy, platform and adventure games. Do this! Go there! Fetch that! It’s an endless stream of tasks that make me feel… occupied.

Then I remember that it’s been several weeks since I last published a post on any of my blogs, and I realise something that is endemic to my behavioural situation: I rarely finish anything because I’m constantly being distracted by something else. I never find the time to sit down with an idea long enough to nurture it past conception, but then find myself being constantly frustrated that my labour bears no fruit. I’m not just talking about tasks, but also relationships as well – most of my relationships are conducted online – I only make time for people who are on Facebook. God forbid you should try and meet me for a coffee or something, ‘coz there could be 300 other people whose tweets, status posts or IMs I’m missing out on while you’re selfishly consuming my time.

So here’s the deal. I realise it’s kinda late for resolutions, but for the rest of this year I resolve to:

• Make more time for people. I don’t mean being more personable, but actually taking the effort to connect with people, both the ones who have actually been actively trying to reach out to me, as well as those who I’ve lost contact with as a result of my aggressive negligence.
• Go deeper. I’m gonna stop wondering why my half-assed ideas aren’t getting anywhere, and actually do something about it. One key change I need to make is to stop being my own biggest critic, and spend less time trying to be awesome. So what if things end up failing or resulting in a dead end?
• Break free of limitations. Over the last few months we went through a bit of a lean period financially. Don’t get the wrong idea though; this was a “rich man’s problem” which deserves no pity, but I digress. Instead of focusing on what I stand to lose, I must make a conscious effort to take bigger risks – to think of it not as loss but sacrifice, even if it is nothing more than fuel for the great hamster wheel that life can be sometimes.

There may be more, but that’s a start.

Shun the unbeliever, shuuuuuun!

I suppose that when one declares an unbelief in God as I did in a previous post, there’s no avoiding the fact of the matter regardless of how much I wanted the discussion to be about the consequences of my decision rather than the decision itself. The irony is that while I continue to support the Christian community in the intellectual sense, they are evidently supporting me in the religious sense in such a way that it appears to the casual observer as if there is disagreement or conflict between us. There is not. (For those of you reading this on cyberseraphic, there was a fairly lively discussion “behind closed doors” in Facebook.) The comments formed a perfect proof of the point that I was trying to make: friends past and present, my church community, rallied around to provide their love and support.

While I don’t want this series to be an intellectual discussion of theology, I will spend one post briefly elaborating on how I arrived at my present position, after which I intend to close the door on this area of discourse.

As I said in the footnote of my previous post (for the record, there is a slightly extended version on my blog which didn’t appear in the Facebook version), there is some degree of semantic trickery involved in labelling myself as an Atheist because language is not a perfect tool that precludes misinterpretation. In a sense, I absolutely believe that “god” is possible. “Aha!” I hear you say, “that makes you agnostic!” but I stand by my assertion that I do not believe in the possibility or existence of a real and present God. You can provide as many theological or apologetic arguments as you like pointing out exactly how or why I’m mistaken about this, but all that matters is that in my entire Christian life, I have been categorically unable to find God through any of my physical senses, faculties of reason, intellect or emotion, or through any of the prescribed means of “hearing from God”. Playing “hide and seek” is not my idea of a close, intimate relationship with my lord and saviour. Hence atheist.

I hope that those of you who knew me during that part of my life never thought that I was anything other than earnest in my beliefs and actions, and likewise ask you to understand and accept that I am now moving forward with the same sense of conviction and honesty in seeking out the Truth albeit in a new direction. Long as these posts are, they’re still way too short to convey every step of the personal journey that led me to the above conclusion, and it’d be just as futile to attempt to thrash it out in a long trail of comments. It didn’t appear to me in an epiphany, and I didn’t just suddenly decide to switch over one night.

As previously mentioned, my objective is to promote harmony between religious and atheist groups, and penetrate the fog of misconceptions through which the groups usually see one another.

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This post is part of the series An Atheist In God’s Kingdom.

How time flies

This Penny Arcade comic made me feel kinda sad, reason being, after spending an inordinate amount of time getting every single coin in New Super Mario Bros. Wii, I’m playing Super Mario Galaxy again after discovering that having achieved 120 stars with Mario, doing it all over again with Luigi will earn me the opportunity to play a secret 121st level. Then on the PC, I’m playing through Prince of Persia a second time even though I recently finished it. My excuse is that I wanted to give my new graphics card a good run, but really, I’m trying to collect all 900 “light seeds” to unlock bonus material (character costumes).

I always feel guilty for not making better use of my time – what exactly have I achieved in my obsessive-compulsive pursuit of the above goals? Was I truly more entertained in having achieved everything, or am I only doing it so that I can brag about it on Facebook? Instead, I could / should be writing, increasing my proficiency in cello/violin/piano through practise, learning the skills required to turn my ideas into reality, etc. It may just be that gaming creates the delusion of achieving something because of its interactive nature.

I never wanted us to be one of those couples that do nothing but sit and watch TV every night. Yet by denying myself, I end up sitting around angsting over what to do instead – and achieving just as little – probably less – than if I’d just let myself watch Top Gear or something. (On the other hand, Jenny’s perfectly fine because she’s busy studying for her Master of Counselling degree.)

Let me put the question out there: what do you do to pass the time, and do you ever feel the need to justify it?