I think we’re just kind of used to Christianity
I’d like to take a moment and defend Will Smith. Will Smith is being pilloried on Twitter, largely due to an easily mockable video of Will Smith on Tavis Smiley’s program (previously). I’ve joined in the mocking. But the caption of the video is “Will Smith on Will Smith, Scientologist”, and I’d like to reflect on what it means to accuse someone of being a Scientologist in this country, as opposed to what it means to accuse someone of being a Christian.
According to advanced Scientology doctrine, “thetans” are spirits that have existed for 300 trillion years. This is, of course, ludicrous. The universe is only, roughly, 14 billion years old. Scientology is off by four orders of magnitude. But according to Christian tradition — and many Christians, especially in the United States — the universe is 6,000 years old. This is off by six orders of magnitude.
Scientology teaches that the human mind is a thing of great power, capable of amazing things. This is true, in that the human brain does measurably do things. Not all the things that Scientology says it can do, to be sure, but stuff. But in the Christian Bible (John 11) human bodies that have been buried for four days come back to health. This can’t happen.
Scientology uses weird pseudo-technological boxes of wires, switches, and lights to aid in its teaching. The boxes do nothing. But some boxes of wires, switches, and lights do do things. I’m typing on one right now. But a device made by crossing two sticks? That’s supposed to be, essentially, magic in Christianity, but most are too small to do anything but metaphorically beat things.
The Church of Scientology is a wealthy organization able to command great donations from its followers, and claims many adherents among celebrities. But the wealth of this church absolutely pales in comparison with the wealth of the Roman Catholic Church, which claims not only many, many more Hollywood celebs, but actual lawmakers able to make decisions that affect my life and the life of my son.
A valid comment on Scientology, however, is that it is new. As far as I can tell, this is the primary differentiating factor from Christianity.
Now, to you, the Christian reader (I know there are many): some of you will claim that of course you don’t believe in the magic part of Christianity. Of course the universe is old, of course putrid bodies don’t come back to life, of course totems hold only placebo value. And many will admit that the Christian churches wield a frightening and inappropriate amount of power in the world, and especially the U.S. But, to get to the core point: Will Smith is not a Scientologist. He’s a bit loony, to be sure, but what he actually says is “I just think a lot of the ideas in Scientology are brilliant and revolutionary and non-religious”. And I’d like you to reflect — to reflect carefully — on how this is different from someone who discards the magic in Christianity and embraces it as a historically novel and revolutionary ethical framework.
Not a troll. Please think. And the next time you are writing a check to a multi-billion-dollar organization and supporting it in public: introspect. And maybe cut the Scientologists a bit of slack.
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5 Responses to “I think we’re just kind of used to Christianity”
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November 11th, 2009 at 23h18
Well, I do believe that human bodies that have been buried for four days can come back to health. And I believe the supernatural aspect of Christianity to be true.
This, in a nutshell, is my argument (I started a blog myself and I’ll give the address to you privately, but for now I’ll cut and paste some stuff from it at the bottom of the message):
1) A supernatural world outside of the observable is a real possibility
2) Supernatural revelation, as opposed to human speculation or imagination, is possible
3) Lack of evidence of the supernatural is entirely possible and can be intentional
4) There is no such thing as a “personal truth”. Either the supernatural exists or it does not, and if it does, most religions will be completely off the mark (many do contradict each other).
As you know, I had a personal supernatural experience that made me abandon my Agnosticism. I won’t describe it here, but I will post some internet links that are interesting at the bottom of the page. Not evidence, for sure, but merely interesting. In fact, I’ve learned that revelation is given to the ones hungry for it. Otherwise, without revelation or evidence, most religions are similarly likely and discussion becomes futile.
Finally, most religion (including Christianity) is more based on tradition than on revelation and a personal relationship with God. Jesus himself condemned the Pharisees (supreme religious authorities of the time) as hypocrites. Pharisees are alive and well and very prevalent in our present day.
In the following text I expand on the points above:
–
Are we living in a computer simulation?
Suppose you’re a character in a computer game. For instance, “The Sims” or “Second Life”. Heck, even “Grand Theft Auto” would do. So you’re walking around the world you know as reality, and another character comes in and asks you to show him evidence of The Programmer. What evidence can you show him? That’s right, nothing at all. What’s more, The Programmer can communicate with you individually, quite spectacularly even, without leaving a trace of evidence for others to see.
The Programmer knows what you are thinking (everybody’s thoughts are recorded in his hard drive), can put thoughts and desires in you, and can alter situations, people and things around you to direct you while you are completely oblivious to it – all without a trace of evidence.
I’m not a physicist, but I’ll try to present some insights I’ve been thinking about. I hope in a cogent manner.
If you think about what makes the Universe, you are probably likely to think about matter and energy. However, information is just as crucial an element as well. Information is what defines biological and physical systems and processes. For example, proteins cannot be synthesized from its physical components alone, without the information provided by DNA.
A physicist at Princeton, John Archibald Wheeler, introduced the notion that information theory can provide key insights into the why and how of physical reality. He regards the physical world as made of information, with energy and matter as incidentals. Seth Lloyd takes it further, and imagines the Universe as a single, enormous quantum computer. How efficient this computer is, is bounded by how much energy a single logical operation consumes. And this logical operation, the switching of a bit from 1 to 0 or vice-versa, is performed by tiny particles, such as electrons and atoms, by changing their spin.
But this changing of the spin consumes energy, and since there is only a finite amount of energy in the universe, there is a limit to how fast the computer can perform an operation. Lloyd calculates that the universe has performed 10^120 operations since its birth. This means that Universe can be seen as running some software program…and that this number indicates how fast and efficient that software is.
What about the hardware that the Universe runs this on, the component particles, atoms and electrons?. This number, in an interesting coincidence, is the same as what he calculated is the number of bits of information the Universe can hold – 10^120 bits. Dr Lloyd guessed that if you count in every particle and add other things such as gravitational fields inside black holes, the universe can hold 10^120 bits of info. In other words, the Universe is what has emerged after having setting every one of its constituent bits once.
Basically everything we see and feel could be seen as a software simulation. In a world made up of bits, physics is exactly the same as a simulation of physics. There are some rules and the software calculates the outcome.
The problem now is that there is no evidence that can conceivably be produced to show that the universe is not any kind of computer, making the Simulation Hypothesis unfalsifiable and therefore scientifically unacceptable by some standards.
In other words, proving that God exists is outside of the scope of science. And there you have it. God and science are NOT contradictory.
All that fighting about whether we believe in evolution or creationism or the Big Bang is just a gigantic waste of time. All can be true simultaneously. God could have used evolution and at the same time be in control of every atom in the Universe.
Take the Big Bang for example. It was a creation and expansion of space and time. There was nothing before it, because whatever caused it is not bound by time. It exists outside of it. If we define space-time as “the natural world”, then whatever caused it would be defined as “supernatural”. There is nothing in the natural laws that will allow us to know what was outside of the Big Bang. If it is God, then lack of evidence is intentional.
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Now the interesting links I promised.
The first one you have to find yourself. It seems to have been removed due to copyright issues. It is episode 8 of an Australian show on religions (John Safran vs God). They try to debunk a different belief systems each episode, in a humorous or sarcastic way (Mormonism, voodoo, buddhism, islam, catholicism etc). You can find the episodes on YouTube and I recommend watching them all.
The second one are some clips from Bob Larson, a deliverance minister. In terms of the things seen here, this is merely demonic oppression (as opposed to full possession), I have personally seen a these manifestations and external manifestations (cold spots, being touched and “Ghosthunters” type stuff) as well as demonic possession manifestations. It is all around us and we have NO IDEA at all. Like I said, as presented this is no real evidence, but I hope you’ll agree its interesting:
http://www.therealexorcist.com/watch.html
Finally, this is an episode from Destination Truth (on Syfy). Admittedly, some things they tend to look for on the show are dumb (specially creature from the lagoon type stuff ), but once in a while its really cool. This one I liked:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZSVrWBw4c0
November 11th, 2009 at 23h30
You’re welcome to describe your personal supernatural experience. I don’t feel comfortable publishing it for you. If you don’t, that’s fine.
November 13th, 2009 at 00h19
Thanks. I won’t get into it unless it’ll be useful to somebody, in which case, sure.
November 28th, 2009 at 13h46
I know this is not your main point, but you write:
“The Church of Scientology is a wealthy organization able to command great donations from its followers”
One of the problems the IRS has with Scientology is that the “donations” are really “charges” for classes thus not freely given. The IRS only considered them a not for profit relious group because they got tired of fighting them in court.
March 4th, 2010 at 20h39
It does seem that everybody is into this kind of stuff lately. Don’t really understand it though, but thanks for trying to explain it. Appreciate you shedding light into this matter. Keep it up