Like what you've read?

On Line Opinion is the only Australian site where you get all sides of the story. We don't
charge, but we need your support. Here�s how you can help.

  • Advertise

    We have a monthly audience of 70,000 and advertising packages from $200 a month.

  • Volunteer

    We always need commissioning editors and sub-editors.

  • Contribute

    Got something to say? Submit an essay.


 The National Forum   Donate   Your Account   On Line Opinion   Forum   Blogs   Polling   About   
On Line Opinion logo ON LINE OPINION - Australia's e-journal of social and political debate

Subscribe!
Subscribe





On Line Opinion is a not-for-profit publication and relies on the generosity of its sponsors, editors and contributors. If you would like to help, contact us.
___________

Syndicate
RSS/XML


RSS 2.0

No god doesn’t mean life is dull, monotonous or pointless

By Jake Farr-Wharton - posted Friday, 4 November 2011


Have you ever been asked a question that, in answering, entirely changed either your, or another person’s perspective? Such a question, with the potential to affect one’s perspective of non-theism and naturalism, is asked of me occasionally: “as someone who doesn’t believe in god, and instead believes in a naturalistic interpretation of the universe, doesn’t it depress you to view the world as completely natural, cold and mechanical?”

Following probing in to why this question is asked, it is apparent that theists see non-theism/atheism as a self-assured nihilist proposition. That is, theists believe the non-theist/atheist assertion of a wholly naturalistic universe – i.e. one that is not effected by a benevolent, interventional/interactive creator whom you appease during your life in hopes of a blissful immortality in the form of an afterlife – is akin to claiming that the universe is dull and monotonous and ultimately pointless. It is as though they believe that without the focal point of a creator, there is no point in living. Thus, the prospect of living without belief in a god – and certainly without the belief in an afterlife – to many theists, is a terrifying proposition.

 

Advertisement

The Natural Nature of Nature

The argument from design – that all things exhibiting complexity must have a designer – is an elegantly simple proposal. After all, all you need to do is look at the human hand or brain to marvel at our own amazing complexity, or look into an electron microscope to view the remarkable intricacy of a red blood cell! The problem with this argument is two fold, however; firstly, we have an amazingly diverse fossil record documenting the millions of years of the evolution of hominin, among other traits, cranial capacity and hand positioning and decades of research into the genetic interrelationships of all living things. Secondly, logic dictates that if all things exhibiting complexity must have a designer, the designer must have a designer, which must also have a designer, and so on, and on. Nonetheless, if naturalism is to be treated as theoretically viable, we should be able to propose some evidenced hypotheses that support formation of life from natural elements, which provided a platform for evolution, by way of natural selection, to launch from.

Well, in 1952 two biochemists from the University of Chicago, Stanley Miller and Harold Urey, created a sealed experiment that replicated the conditions found on our planet over four billion years ago. Using a host of chemicals, a heat source (replicating the sun and volcanism) and a source of electricity (replicating lightning and sources of radiation), Miller and Urey witnessed the formation of 20 of the essential building blocks of life. While ‘life’ was not formed during the experiment, the earth had billions of years prior to our arrival, and this experiment ran only for a short time.

In the 1980’s, scientists found a particular type of clay, Montmorillonite, which was abundant in the sea floor and in hot pools of water on land during the primordial earth. This actually formed the perfect catalyst for forming polynucleotides, or long chains that would eventually form RNA. These polynucleotide chains would acquire specific traits over time to better suit their environment and over hundreds of millions of years, RNA grew more and more complex.

Eventually, a single strand bonded to a second strand and DNA double-helix was born. Now, the major difference between RNA and DNA is that DNA requires proteins or amino acids to replicate. Luckily, the same Montmorillonite stew that formed the nucleotides was abundant all sorts of complex chemicals, including all sorts of amino acids. One of the abundant complex chemicals, lipids, has a natural tendency to form into spherical structures called micelles. RNA or DNA that attracted the lipid molecules would have been better protected inside the micelle structure and as such, had a better ability to survive and replicate more successfully. Here we have an analogous primitive single cell organism, doing nothing more than evolving to survive. The rest (i.e. the next 3.7 billion years) is history.

When you couple the above hypotheses of natural origins with the extensive fossil record and molecular genetics – illustrating the genetic origins and interrelationships between everything from an ostrich to an emu or humans and iceberg lettuce – you can see, quite definitively, that there isn’t much of a role for a benign, hands-on creator.

Advertisement

Cold and Mechanical?

Considering our origins as proteomic blobs of chemical slush, it isn’t much of a stretch to realise that humans have been using (and cultivating/domesticating) plants that produce specific biochemical reactions, for tens of thousands of years. Would it surprise you to learn that there is a well known psycotropic hallucinogen found in abundance around the area that Moses had a deep and meaningful with a burning bush? It shouldn’t! It is these very specific biochemical changes that take place in our bodies in response to these drugs – synthesised from the alkaloids of plants, fungus, bacteria and metals - that illustrate your own cold and mechanical nature.

In fact, you can chemically inhibit a chemical process in your body; next time you have a headache treat it with some paracetamol or ibuprofen. When you are injured, your body naturally produces a hormone called prostaglandin; ibuprofen, works by blocking the cyclooxygenase enzymes known as COX-1 and COX-2. Paracetamol works by selectively inhibiting the COX-3 enzyme, which is found in the brain and spinal column. All medications, in fact, are chemical compounds that produce a specific physiological reaction in the body.

Let’s take it a step further. Plenty of people claim to have met god or had a short stay in heaven during a phenomenon known as Near Death Experience or NDE. While these people are often vehemently positive that their experiences are/were real, the human brain becomes completely unreliable when deprived of a simple and abundant (on this planet) little molecule; oxygen. Our body is reliant on a steady supply of this tasteless, odourless gas, which is the by-product of the respiration cycle of plants. When the brain becomes hypoxic, and if it is sustained for more than a short couple of minutes, you’re dead.

Furthermore, our atmosphere is composed of a mix of oxygen, carbon dioxide and nitrogen - and myriad other molecules, but these are the main ones – and at a neutral atmospheric pressure (sea level), you inhale the mixture and your lungs take what is needed into the blood stream and filter out and exhale the rest. Something interesting happens, however, when the pressure increases, say, during a scuba dive, nitrogen, usually simply exhaled, is forced into the blood stream. At deeper deaths, or during longer dives, the nitrogen begins to inhibit cognitive ability. Acting like a drug, the effect is aptly named, ‘nitrogen narcosis’ and is actively exploited, quite beneficially, as an anaesthetic – laughing gas or nitrous oxide (N2O) – albeit in a controlled dilution.

Do you have an iPhone? Look at it closely. Within that little piece of mechanical brilliance are elements that were, along with the iron in your blood, formed in the cores of the super-massive stars that formed soon after the big bang. When they went supernova, their mass of rich elements were strewn all over the cosmos. This process, called nucleosynthesis, accounts for the heavy molecules in the universe.

A lump of coal is little more than a lump of carbon molecules. Subject that carbon to immense pressure and heat, such as those found in the centre of our planet, and you have a lump of diamond. Almost 99 per cent of the mass of the human body is made up of the six elements oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, and phosphorus, 65-90 per cent H2O (water) and around 18 per cent carbon. All of this, and so much more correlates rather unequivocally with us, the universe, everything, being cold, unthinking and mechanical.

Does This Depress You?

When one probes the reasoning behind this aspect of the question has almost always had its foundation in the theistic belief in an immortal aspect of oneself; a soul. As mentioned previously, the atheist/non-theistic proposition is quite terrifying to many theists because, among other reasons, it accepts that there is no evidence for a soul.

So, would it surprise you to learn that I, an atheist, believe in eternal life? Of the 7,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms that comprise your average 70kg human, around 200 billion atoms once belonged to William Shakespeare. This is because atoms are inconceivably long lived and travelled, and continually recycled. Every one of those atoms have almost certainly passed through several stars – some exponentially larger than the gravitational focal point of our solar system, some smaller – on their way to you.

When you die, irrespective of whether there is some unknown component of you that you believe ‘lives on after death’, your body will decompose and your atoms will be, eventually, recycled. Superficially, your chemically rich body will be used as food for food, insects, worms, parasites, bacteria, and in the long term, everything that used to be you will become something else. Physically speaking, while you will no longer be you, everything that once encompassed you, will live on, effectively, forever!

In a more ethereal and subjective sense, your knowledge, aptitude, intellect, demeanour, emotions, reactions, beliefs, culture, and even physiology, are all the sum of the people who have come before you. While it’s unlikely that you’ll remember the first time you learned that sharing is socially advantageous; understanding that we learn from everyone and everything around us is a powerful realisation. This process, referred to as enculturation, is an intrinsically substantial factor in your every belief and thought and will shape most decisions that you make throughout the entirety of your life.

Your parents and their friends, aunts and uncles, cousins and siblings, your friends, your school and university teachers, employers and piers, advertising and media, will make some form of impression on you. Much of that stimulus will be filtered and discarded by that great big beautiful cortex between your ears, and some will stick.

While it is indeed a philosophical position, bordering on existentialism, it is a rational summation that a great many of the traits which we exhibit are remnants of traits from those we’ve interacted with. For example, the same way that we inherited the extent to which we share food with our parents or friends or partners or children – from our parents or friends or partners or children – we, inturn, pass on these traits to everyone that we encounter. This will continue ad infinitum, or at least until the Mayan calendar ends and the world implodes in 2012.

While this has been a long and roundabout way of answering “no”, to the above question, it was important that we take the time to acknowledge that a naturalistic interpretation of the universe is both valid and far from depressing. Disbelief in a god or an immortal soul does not preclude belief in an immorality (of sorts). Just as your atoms will live on indefinitely – being utilised trillions of times, in trillions of different ways – the personality traits that you owe to the influence of others, will influence countless others. How could anyone be depressed by such a realisation, naturalistic, cold and mechanical, as it is? Sure it is slightly existentialist, but it is honest and reconciles with an evidence based view of the universe; a far cry from the cosmology presented by the myriad religions.

  1. Pages:
  2. 1
  3. 2
  4. All

Article edited by Jo Coghlan.
If you'd like to be a volunteer editor too, click here.



Discuss in our Forums

See what other readers are saying about this article!

Click here to read & post comments.

93 posts so far.

Share this:
reddit this reddit thisbookmark with del.icio.us Del.icio.usdigg thisseed newsvineSeed NewsvineStumbleUpon StumbleUponsubmit to propellerkwoff it

About the Author

Jake Farr-Wharton lives on the Gold Coast, is the author of Letters to Christian Leaders; Hollow be thy claims and is also host of The ImaginaryFriendsShow.com Podcast - the one true podcast on science, religion, current affairs and politics. Check out the book here for your kindle or here in hardcopy.

Other articles by this Author

All articles by Jake Farr-Wharton

Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

Article Tools
Comment 93 comments
Print Printable version
Subscribe Subscribe
Email Email a friend
Advertisement

About Us Search Discuss Feedback Legals Privacy