The Immortal Atheist Soul
The human body is said to be constructed of a few dollars worth of common chemicals, though I’m not sure what the point of saying this is. A blank DVD costs about a quarter in bulk these days, but you could pay thousands of dollars for one that has the bits on the surface rearranged in a preferred way. The software is what makes it valuable. Patterns are what matter.
In a universe equivalent to a blank DVD, the occasional emergence of a pattern more likely to persist dominated the chaos surrounding it and gradually led to the emergence of yet more complex patterns. It’s almost as if the universe itself is making choices, choices that sometimes seem correct and sometimes seem wrong, but it simply seems like a matter of time before it makes the right choices, the ones that move order forward. This is why I occasionally and reluctantly use the word “pantheist” to describe my views.
The human body was constructed over billions of years of natural selection, and of all the parts of the human body, the brain is the organ that stands out. The brain itself is a microcosm, a pattern which like the universe itself, makes choices and enhances the order of its own pattern through the process of learning and responding to the results of those choices, good or bad. Every other part of the human body seems to exist for the sole purpose of ensuring that this one organ can continue making choices, for preserving what we think of as consciousness. I’ve often discussed my predictions about the human race preserving what matters about us, our consciousness, in a superior and more persistent manner such as through some really advanced computer system. Such an advance would allow us to extend our personal lives dramatically; almost indefinitely.
But then it occurred to me that we’re already doing that. Patterns aren’t supposed to remain static. If I were looking for purpose, I would look for it in the universe around me, and by all evidence, patterns are constantly changing. I am not the same person that I was yesterday or even five minutes ago. My pattern has changed since then. The me of yesterday is dead. Sometimes a significant event in our lives even causes us to mourn the passing of our yesterday self. Have you ever made a decision that changed you in some way that you deeply regret? Did you pass up an opportunity that you now wish you hadn’t? Did you lose your virginity in a less than ideal manner? Did you experience some trauma that continues to haunt you? Did you ever wish you could go back in time and make a different choice and avoid what seems a negative experience altogether? In that moment, you were coming to the realization that the yesterday you was dead forever, and you were mourning.
When a mother conveys her knowledge and values to her children, she is preserving some of her pattern. When you engage in a conversation with someone, you are conveying some of your pattern to that person. When a novelist writes down his thoughts, he is conveying some of his pattern to his readers. When artists create a painting, or a sculpture, or a musical piece, they are conveying part of themselves to anyone who will enjoy that art. Just like the universe itself, you are selecting the parts of yourself that you want to survive. Every moment you’re on this Earth, you’re making your impression onto it and particularly onto the people around you who will be forever changed by their interactions with you. If we ever learn to convey our decision making processes, our wills, that which we most intimately think of as the core of ourselves, into computers, then it won’t be some new immortality. It will simply be a refinement of a process of immortalization we’ve already been engaged in since our minds evolved.
I have a friend whom I’ve known since high school. We met to play role-playing games with other friends where we would each take on a role and write intricate stories together. We created characters and places, even entire worlds in our minds. Afterward we’d go to an all night Denny’s and talk over milkshakes about anything from the latest movies to deep metaphysical subjects until nearly sunrise. The conclusions that I’ve come to about the nature of the universe, about consciousness, about socio-political issues, these were all significantly shaped by my conversations with Eric.
Eric was known as the lister. He loved to write down lists. If he wanted to persuade you on some matter, he would pull out a piece of paper and read off a list of reasons, from highest relevance to least. Eric filled tomes of spiral bound notebooks with diagrams of artifacts he had constructed in his mind, with intricate character designs complete with elaborate costumes and familial histories, and with maps of the worlds from his stories. He filled those tomes with himself. He conveyed to me and his other friends and loved ones those thoughts that he had selected as meaningful parts of himself.
Every day of his life, Eric extended his pattern further and further out, reaching into the lives of those he shared his life with and, to a different extent, even further out into everyone whom those people interacted with, and so on. Late last night, the several dollars worth of chemicals that make up Eric’s body lost the cohesion necessary to keep his brain going. That Eric of yesterday is dead. Meanwhile, the microcosm of the Eric of today is alive and remains a significant influence on the universe. I know he does because I think back on those hours and hours of late night chats at Denny’s and I realize that he helped me write this article.
Thank you, Eric.
The body doesn’t exist to serve the brain, the brain is a part of the body and the body is a vehicle for the genes it is there to help perpetuate. An intelligent brain is better at helping its body to survive long enough to reproduce. And genes themselves are merely copies of patterns, information, that have in many cases lasted for millions of years. The ones that improve your brain earn themselves the right to persist, and the ones that don’t help you go extinct.
So short-sighted, Lee. Genes and organic biology are just a brief stepping stone to something better. The universe’s process of natural selection is what allowed our minds to develop, but it’s our minds that matter and it’s our microcosmic selection process, our thoughts, creativity, and ability to manipulate the world around us, which will make our own bodies and the natural selection process obsolete before long.
Sorry to hear it, Dale. How did your friend die?
Whether Lee or Dale is correct about the primacy of consciousness vs primacy of genes/replicators is irrelevant to me in order to see the beauty in this post. Whether the “goal” of existence is for consciousness to progress, or whether consciousness is merely a tool to help genes replicate, consciousness *does* exist. And it is a necessary factor in making us who we are. And consciousness includes memory. Part of who Dale is exists because he knew Eric. Part of Eric is now part of Dale.
I’m sorry about Eric dying, Dale. But I’m glad you remember fun times and good things about him.
Great stuff, it makes so much more sense to think of souls or reincarnation in terms of cause and effect. Everything we do has effects that influence the universe forever. The only other place I’ve seen this interpretation is at The Absolute. I wonder if Eric was familiar with their philosophy.
I’d have to agree with LeeJH that genetic evolution is solely about gene propagation, and that consciousness has just been a helpful means to that end. Someday we may be able to technologically replace the genetic body, and our evolution would take place as technological advancement. And of course, there is memetic evolution—the intellectual progress of human knowledge.
He suffered a long bout with cancer.
Thank you Dale.
Now matters. Actually, it’s more than that — what you do with _now_ is all there is.
This post reminded me of a wonderful video on the preciousness of “the now”.
I really like that post, Ryan. Thank you for sharing it. That’s very reflective of my thoughts lately about the roles that we get shoved into by tremendous peer pressure and even threats. I touched on it with “Slavery Equals Death”. We can all learn to live our lives more fully as we learn to tune out the cacophony of voices around us telling us what will make us happy so that we can hear that quiet inner voice that knows what we need to be happy better than anyone else.
“Genes and organic biology are just a brief stepping stone to something better”
What’s better is subjective. See bellow
“It’s almost as if the universe itself is making choices, choices that sometimes seem correct and sometimes seem wrong, but it simply seems like a matter of time before it makes the right choices, the ones that move order forward.”
You are implying rational thought here. The word ‘choice’ to me… and I think most means free will, rational thought, sentience. The universe as far as we can tell follows some set of rules. If the “rules” change it is only because man’s understanding is flawed. The universe does not choose. It just is. Life has no purpose in and of itself. It is simply a possible combination of the base materials playing by the rules. There is no target. No goal. Just an algorithm playing out. (at least on a macro level it seems) Those lifeforms which are fit enough (not fittest, common mistake) to survive do so.
The debate on free will and what has it is a conversation I’m not going to get into here. I just wanted to point out that above and say that I do agree with you that we live on indirectly due to our impact on our environment. I also agree that at some point our bodies may be more or less meaningless to our survival. However I’d say we’ve (and any rational being) bucks the natural selection thing pretty quickly. There are obviously parts of it around such as what one finds attractive. There are many learned components to what drives us but its still has an irrational, instinctive base.
These things just are. I don’t understand why special meaning is often applied to them. Why pantheists rename the universe god or components of god. If everything is god the term has no meaning in any traditional sense of the word. It seems little different than claiming PI or Euler’s number have meaning. Or that the moon circling the earth for some planned reason. Or that flipping a coin has the ability to tell you what path to take. A coin flip is predictable. The fact we are ignorant of the variables necessary to calculate the likely outcome nor have the computing ability to do so doesn’t give it special meaning. It doesn’t mean the universe is giving you the right answer. It doesn’t mean the universe is rational.
And being ignorant is a fine state. It is not weakness. It is not negative or disempowering as many of the LoA followers have implied. The desire for truth is strong in the skeptics and is rather motivating. Acknowledging the facts of the matter is a far stronger and safer position. Both personally and with society. There is no reason to assume a positive X if it’s not directly relevant.
Bile, it seems like you’re both reading some things into my post that I don’t mean to say and also presuming certain things that we can’t really know, at least not right now. I said it is almost as if the universe is making choices, and maybe it is. Maybe the natural selection process is very similar to how the brain develops, either over centuries of evolution or simply as it develops in a growing person to the point where it finally achieves what we think of as consciousness.
I don’t see the universe as God, which is why I am so reluctant to use the term “pantheist”. There is no mysticism in this for me. I have reasonable theories about the nature of the universe and of consciousness based on my observations. I don’t believe the universe is guiding me with some sort of overlording consciousness any more than I am consciously guiding the white blood cells in my body. Do you see the possibility, if we evolve long enough, that the microbes in our body could some day achieve a degree of consciousness to where they might wonder if they’re part of something bigger? I am acknowledging that we may be, and even likely are, evolving toward levels of consciousness that we can’t even begin to imagine right now, and that consciousness is more complicated than what neurons are firing in your brain right this moment. Right now we share thoughts with language, media, art, etc. but maybe one day we’ll have technologies that allow it to be even more intimate than that. If we preserve our lives and hence our consciousnesses with technology some time in the future, I just see that as a refinement of something we’re already doing in a cruder fashion.
People often say that a loved one is living on in our memories, and I guess that’s what I’m saying right now. Only I’m explaining why I really believe it and I’m basing that belief on totally rational reasons; not any sort of fantasies or faiths that require beliefs that I cannot substantiate with my real experience and the evidence around me. I talk about this in the comments of a previous post. Our minds are unique but we have vast shared experience like our similar senses that connects us, and are bound together even more with things like a vast shared modern media. We are connected by our social natures. We each have something to contribute to a bigger consciousness that goes on long after our individual bodies die, and I’m not talking about telepathy or manipulating events with our subconscious minds or a mystical connecting energy or anything like that. Those things aren’t necessary to explain it.
I thought the article read quite well. I hope everyone’s coping okay.
Sorry for your loss.
Based on what you wrote here, you either have read, or would enjoy reading, The Physics of Immortality, by Frank Tipler.
Evolution isn’t a linear progression, even if it appears to you almost as if it is, like you see the universe almost as if its making choices. At the heart of your thinking is this idea of perpetual progress, which inadvertently infuses purpose into life and the universe. If you start with that, then I would think it’s inevitable that you’d arrive at assumptions of some driving force behind it all.
Bile certainly appears correct from what we can observe of life and the universe, that:
“The universe does not choose. It just is. Life has no purpose in and of itself. It is simply a possible combination of the base materials playing by the rules. There is no target. No goal.”
Your language also presupposes a driving force, whether you realize it or not , when you say things like “[t]he human body was constructed”.
I like your dvd analogy, but perhaps not for the reasons you’d like. Yes, if you break it down to its components, it isn’t worth much but if it happens to have something of value on it, then it’s worth more than the sum of its parts, but where does this value come from, this worth? From us. The universe is oblivious to both the dvd and what’s on it. Only we assign value to it. Likewise, humanity has no inherent value, but we assign value to it, to ourselves and to those close to us.
I’m sorry for your loss, but Eric does not remain “a significant influence on the universe”. Those who remember him are no doubt influenced, and perhaps that effect may in turn influence others, but the universe is oblivious, for it’s not sentient, “it just is”.
Whatever niggling about the details might be going on in the comments above, this is a wonderful eulogy for someone who was obviously a dear friend. Condolences.
You should read “The God Part of the Brain” http://godpart.com/index.html
Re: The God Part of the Brain
I don’t want to presume anything about the book, but it wouldn’t surprise me to discover there is wiring in many brains such as that. We humans certainly seem to be very uncomfortable with not having answers for everything. We can’t seem to settle for “I just don’t know right now” as an acceptable response to any given question. However, it’s that nagging desire to know answers that drives us to new discoveries, so it’s not an altogether bad trait.
The thing that made the things for which there is no known maker
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVbnciQYMiM
Sadly, my reading list is getting pretty long in comparison to available time so I’d probably need more to go on than a title and some encouraging endorsements from people I’ve not heard of to figure out if I want to spend time and probably $ on this one.
I live in NH so I could probably figure out a way to let you borrow the book.. for me it left me an atheist…
There are few people who are remembered even by their relatives 100 years after their death. There are even fewer people remembered by anyone 500 years after their death.
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Dale, this is one of the most beautfiul things I’ve ever read. I’m literally tearing up.
I’ve never been able to feel the sense of transcendance that the religious often feel. I could never buy into the bullshit. But your friend’s death has obviously cleared your mind, and you’ve grasped on to some fundamental truths here.
Your comics are your pattern living on outside of you. I’m sure you realized that while writing this, but let me say, as a frequent reader, that we are all fortunate to share in your consciousness.
I’m sorry for your loss.
Respectfully,
Mike
I’ve never seed a DVD put random bits on itself. Damn I was feeling so smug as an athiest too!!