Our life is a graph with 4 quadrants.

1) Urgent but not important
2) Not urgent but important
3) Urgent and important
4) Neither urgent nor important.

Only we h’ve to enlist and decide what is important and to carry on with that work. People fail to enlist things because they are either sluggish or apathetic.

If we put on writing, that itself gives more clarity. Clarity is the key for success. One should always know “what you want”. Find what is important to you.

Bayesian rationality is a better rationality model than one that requires 100% proof, of which your expectations are adjusted compared to the volume of evidence for or against a particular theory. Atheism for me isn’t an absolute, I’d guess there is a small, but not zero, chance that there is a higher power, simply that all of the hard evidence I’ve seen makes atheism more likely.

So, no, atheism is not illogical, nor is theism (if you truly believe the evidence you’ve been given demonstrates a higher power). It may not be correct, but that doesn’t mean it is an irrational belief to hold.

-Scott

Either end of the spectrum lacks proof.

Agnosticism (http://tinyurl.com/b3azx) is the only logical explanation.

I succumbed to illogic when I became a Christian theist, because the illogic of my atheism was too painful. I traded illogic for illogic. For lack of a better way of putting it, I figured, “If I was God looking in to this universe, I would view life in this tiny universe like an animal loving scientist respects and even cherishes exotic species of rain-forest life.” I would want life in that universe to evolve freely and thrive in abundance.

For many years I maintained my sense of spiritual equilibrium by channeling faith into that general concept, because I disliked atheism as too cold and nihilistic. I figured everyone will die in the flesh and their life force is destined for some unknown “place” (in existence or non-existence) and so what does it matter what we believe? Let me suggest an intrinsic reason why it might matter.

Sharing a thought experiment, envision a sphere with one-way mirrored inner surface as representative of this universe as a closed timelike curve or loop (http://tinyurl.com/3xuq4k).

Observers outside this sphere can “see” into the sphere, but observers within the sphere experience a grand illusion that it goes on forever. Perhaps if they are advanced enough technologically, their physicists measure infinite “reflections” of the sphere’s interior.

If the sphere contains trillions of galaxies, for instance, what viewing instrument is powerful enough to see far enough out to measure the demarcation of the universe’s curvature? Measuring such a massive closed timelike looping universe may take millions of years of developed technology and even then its scientific interpretation is subject to distortion, illusion and yes, delusion. Observers outside the sphere might consider it as one of an infinite number of particles. Each of those particles may contain laws of physics so different from ours that the human imagination in incapable of conceiving even primitive mental imagery of such wonders.

Yes, perhaps we are inside such a sphere, and we may die believing it goes on forever, with a bang and crunch, reinvention of physics, bang and crunch, ad infinitum.

Who is outside the sphere looking in? Perhaps nobody; we may never know. We are like captives born inside a box, like birds whose universe is the bars of their cage (not even having enough evolved intelligence to know the outer boundaries of our universe are in fact bars). More jarring of a thought is that like birds out of their native habitat, we may live and die in our “cage” because there is no life for us (in our primitive material form) outside these confines.

Observers outside the sphere, if there are observers at all, are holding all the cards. I accept the possibility our universe is one spherical particle in a vast desert of sand, on a world within a universe that is a quantum particle in a vast ocean of water, in a universe that is one particle of a massive black hole at the center of a galaxy in a universe… And I equally give probabilistic weight, with a good dose of wishful thinking (and they say that “thoughts are things”) that our consciousness is moving up an evolutionary “escalator” where something wonderful awaits us at the top of the escalator, like going up an escalator in a gloomy subway station to suddenly enter a vibrant modern mall filled with music and life.

First time browsing through your website and I really like the great content you have. I can relate to your list of unimportant things….I thought I was the only one.

Thanks.

I think my list is very similar to yours, though. I think fashion might be a little bit higher up on my concern list (because of the amount of branding I do and how being fairly stylish is part of MY brand), but otherwise I could care less about religion or TV or sports or arbitrary politics.

This is something I’ll have to consider further. You’ve given me something good to stew over! Thanks!