Long Dark Teatimes

I’ve been in Florida, everyone! Pretty good so far. Today we had to get out of the ocean because a pack (school?) of sharks passed by, which was cool to see.

I wanted to make this a post about free will, but it occurred to me that before discussing that quite worthy topic, I ought to lay a foundation. To be precise, it would be impossible to discuss the issue of free will and human consciousness without also addressing the related matter of the soul. Allow me to state my biases: I don’t believe that anything resembling the traditional religious notion of the soul exists.

However, while I may not, such a belief dominates public consciousness. Besides all Abrahamic religions, a belief in the soul permeates Buddhism, Hinduism, and the infinite devotional miscellany human society has produced as systems of belief or religions. Even those who identify “not religious, merely spiritual” reveal their assent to this belief in their choice of words. Therefore, we would logically expect this belief to be, if not well-vetted, at least well-defined. The first question I ask in examining the concept of souls is, “What is a soul?” For the purposes of this post, a “soul” is a nonmaterial object which represents the source of consciousness. It is the soul that persists after death, and (in some traditions) on its own it represents the entirety of our personality and memories, such that after death we are able to act and think with the same identity as we do now. I intend to address this belief piece by piece.

The soul is a “nonmaterial object.” What, precisely, does this mean? (Here I may be getting ahead of myself—materialism is essentially the point of this post.) Presumably a soul has no manifestation in the natural world, in the sense that light or electrons or cats do. This raises a serious problem, in that we must then ask how we can say that a soul “exists,” as it apparently does not affect the world around us in any physical, measurable way. This leaves the soul only possessed of the realm of the abstract. If souls lack physical form, if they represent an entirely separate type of existence, then the only possible subjects for their influence would be ideas, thoughts, and the like—a point that will be addressed further to the end.

The soul is the source of consciousness. What constitutes consciousness is a tad fuzzy. Definitions usually involve being aware of, and responding to, one’s surroundings, and being aware of that process. Of course, what has consciousness—and what has a soul—definitely matters at this point. Humans, according to every tradition ever, have souls. If souls are the source of consciousness then, on some level, gods and ghosts have souls or are souls—even if the gods are very, very big. Proceed downwards then: do plants, seeking the sunlight in phototropism, have souls? Do animals, which can learn and communicate? Do smart animals, like dolphins, which have advanced communication? What about chimpanzees, which share so much of our DNA? How much consciousness is required to be granted a soul? According to Christianity, at least, only humans have souls. Do the brain-dead? (Some forms of Christianity go even farther and give souls to embryos at the moment of fertilization—which raises some interesting questions concerning bacteria, in my opinion.) Accepting for the moment that at least humans have souls, we run into another problem with the source of consciousness allegation. Despite the fact that souls are meant to be nonphysical, made of something wholly different from the rest of the world, Cartesian dualism runs into the unhappy fact that consciousness appears depressing physical. I can go buy chemicals that will nullify my consciousness temporarily—they are called sleeping pills. Does Ambien remove my soul? If I am in a car accident and a tire goes through my head, I may lose much of my brain function. If I forget who I was and become someone new, do I get a new soul? Does Old Zach travel onwards to his afterlife? We cannot at the same time claim that the source of the human mind is magical and acknowledge the fact that damage to and alteration of that mind is easily accomplished via physical means.

The soul persists after death, to the point that after death we are capable of functioning as disembodied consciousness. How a soul, unaffected by the physical world, notices this death is left as an exercise to the reader—it can’t key off of cessation of consciousness, because that would be a symptom rather than a cause of soul loss. Anyway, my actual problem here is that, again, nothing we have seen suggests the existence of a disembodied consciousness. All biological and medical evidence seems to suggest, nay, demand, that consciousness arises as the result of a coordinated neural activity within the brain. A disembodied consciousness—can it feel sleepy without serotonin? Can it feel aggressive without testosterone? Can it feel happy without dopamine? In short, in what sense would a soul or spirit resemble a human consciousness at all? It would have no emotions or sensations. It would have nowhere to store its memory. Etc, etc.

I realize, of course, that I am attempting to apply science to the supernatural—that, to a believer, my argument in the above paragraph is as ridiculous as a disproof of God based on the Second Law of Thermodynamics. These questions need to be asked, however. We can see the world around us, we can observe its properties. From this, we begin to understand it. We are only just beginning to understand our own brains and bodies, yet nowhere in that system do we see a space for the soul. The fact that we don’t ought to raise questions, for if a physical body is necessary and sufficient for consciousness to arise, then the existence of a dualistic soul seems very superfluous.

Realizing that I didn’t believe in souls/disembodied consciousness wove together a lot of my beliefs into a single framework. My lack of belief in gods, an afterlife, or in ghosts had a similar source—philosophical materialism. I don’t believe in a separate class of being, beyond matter and energy. This belief has a number of very important implications, yet it’s not a very often stressed aspect of nontheism. Perhaps we think that it will be too depressing. Belief in a soul is extremely common—perhaps universal. Still, I think that it is an important issue for those of us who want to fight superstition across the world. I also think it has important and relevant consequences for our outlook on life. If we want to live an examined life, free from unsupported assumptions, and if we want to develop an attitude compatible with our own mortality, it becomes very necessary to face this truth.

Sex: The Sexquersex

The inspiration for this posts rests in two separate events. First, I watched a documentary called This Film is Not Yet Rated, which is a fascinating examination of our movie rating system. They spoke with a director whose film had received an NC-17 rating because a woman onscreen orgasms for too long. The absurdity of the fact rests in that, had someone burst in and killed the woman, that would have been acceptable--we find sex far more objectionable than violence, at least in America. Then, in a very intriguing sequence, they showed a series of sex scenes side-by-side. The pairs all had similar lighting, nudity, positions, etc. One of each pair was heterosexual, one was homosexual. Every homosexual scene was NC-17, ever heterosexual scene was R. Event number two: The American Family Association has ordered a boycott of Home Depot. Yes, what might seem to be an innocent orange outpost of do-it-yourselfism is in fact a subversive plot. You see, Home Depot has donated to--nay, sponsored--gay pride parades. Home Depot has advertised in magazines which advance the homosexual agenda. Home Depot, in fact, offers insurance benefits for same-sex couples. The AFA will not stand for these grave offenses against the American family by all these homosexuals attempting to start American families.

At first, this was going to be about homosexuality, and another day may see a post on that subject. But a point in the AFA's bulletin caught my eye. You see, beyond having an inclusive corporate policy, the pride events Home Depot was sponsoring had children at them. Yes, you heard me. Children. Now, even if you accept the practice of homosexuality, surely you agree that children shouldn't be allowed to see it? Surely you agree that homosexuals had best keep to themselves away from the vulnerable eyes of the little ones? I mean, they're kids. Right? Riiiiight?

FROM THE PEOPLE WHO BROUGHT YOU "RAMBLING LECTURE THINGS ABOUT GEOENGINEERING" -- SEX: THE SEXQUERSEX

(Originally wanted to call this Sex: The Masquerade. Realized that the new name was far cooler.)

Children aren't supposed to know about sex. We created storks that carry babies around as an excuse for the babies, and when children realized that being carried around by a bird would, in fact, terrify any baby to the point of child abuse. (Can birds be tried for child abuse? Well, no, because instead of giving our babies to birds, we just have sex instead.) In addition, it did nothing to explain why storks favored plump women. Eventually, we have what our culture has dubbed "the talk." This is what spy movies refer to as being "read in" on a case. Everyone knows this. But why?

My point here is that I'm having a hard time believing that this secrecy benefits the child--or society. Are we worried that if we inform children about sex, they’ll start having it? Biological issues aside, look at society right now—look at teen pregnancy rates, look at STD transmission among teenagers. Did “protecting” these people from sex, protect them from sex? No, for the same reason that abstinence-only education is a bad idea. People are quite good at ignoring commandments issued by elders, and when the commandment in question involves penises and whatnot, well, it’s so hard to keep track of all this. You protect people from sex by giving them things to protect themselves with (latex is helpful!). The attitude that adolescents won’t have sex if we’re secretive about it dramatically underestimates their intelligence. We’ve been giving them those toys where you put shapes into slots since infancy. They’ve been trained.

Arguably, all that secrecy only hurts a child, and not only by depriving them of information on safe sex. To shift back in ages from teenagers to younger kids, parents often worry about child predators and the like. In that context, not informing a child of the nature of the threat is akin to not telling your child that stealing is possible while they walk around a busy city.

Tracing the phenomenon of sexual secrecy inevitably leads us to discuss the general way our society treats sex, even among adults. Part of me suspects that this is a large part of the AFA’s issue. The American Family Association seems quite disdainful of the actual process needed to create their families. After all, while they’re anti-homosexual, they’re also anti-premarital sex. If you go to their website about “Defining the Gay Agenda” (Warning: Despite my policy of respect towards religion in general, I find this entire website stupid and infuriating. I recommend small doses.) you’ll find their stated reasons for why they oppose this agenda. Point 1: Bible say no gay. Point 2: Gay people are sinful and Jesus can fix them. Point 3: It is our duty as Christians to tell them this. Point 4: We fear the judgment of God on America if we accept homosexuality. Annnd…..Point 5, which proves my point:

“The homosexual movement is a progressive outgrowth of the sexual revolution of the past 40 years and will lead to the normalization of even more deviant behavior.”

There we go. Homosexuality is, to these people, a waypoint in a bigger fight—a local minima of the slippery slope. Going around campaigning against premarital sex would, however, make them look horribly dated, as would going around campaigning against sleeping with (shock) more than one person in a lifetime. Like me playing Starcraft during a defense mission, they fall back to the next terrace of social conservatism and find a fight still acceptable to the mainstream—though likely this will fall too, at which point I imagine polyamory or transsexuality will be the next big taboo.

Alright. So sex has a masquerade because we’re skittish about sex and, in some sense, we want to keep it buried. Why? Saying “religious reasons” doesn’t answer this question—at some point in time, someone had to make up that rule. After all, it didn’t appear fully formed in their brain, inspired by some sort of cosmic lawgiver, of course.

The more I think about, the more I think that these sexual attitudes are simply a massive piece of displaced control. After all, let’s be honest—for most of human history, it paid to be quite careful with sex, especially if you were a woman. Being pregnant with no one to support you is a bad thing. Likewise, if you’re a man, being vigilant for infidelity also made perfect sense, as raising another man’s child is embarrassing if nothing else. It’s no surprise, then, that as society wove moral restrictions into its fabric sexual constraints emerged and were enforced. At this point, it’s by no means inevitably that homosexuality and a sexual masquerade emerged. (Looking at you, Ancient Greece.) However, in Abrahamic religions, at least, it did. In retrospect, this doesn’t surprise me. If you want to formulate a system of laws, you leave as few loopholes as possible to try to keep them effective. Clamping down on any and all possible expressions of sexuality, then, would logically lend itself to the sort of moral control you might seek. (I’m not advocating, just justifying.)

Of course, myriad reasons make this a genuinely awful idea. The first is age. Modern sex (while not perfectly risk-free) doesn’t necessarily play by the same rules as it did when those rules were formulated. Age forms a feedback loop of sorts for conservatives like the AFA—it’s old, therefore it’s good, therefore it gets older, therefore it gets better. Also, this is security by obscurity. Given the choice of an operating system when it comes to security, most people agree that Linux is generally more secure than Windows. Yet, Windows is the clamped-down, hushed-up, closed-source system, and Linux is open to the point that, if you like, you can rewrite the code to your own OS. It’s time for our society to move past Old Testament era ideas and mores. It’s time to be honest with our children, and honest with ourselves. It’s time to admit that sex is real, feels good, and is important to a lot of people. It’s also time to admit that people have sex in a lot of different ways, with a lot of different emotions and connotations—and that’s ok. Perhaps the argument can be made that, in the past, there was a reason for such attitudes. In 2010, such measures are simply counterproductive and no longer effective—if indeed, they ever were.