FAITH vs SCIENCE

Faith is often defined as believing without evidence. Hebrews 11:1 is often quoted:

“Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.”

I prefer Christopher Hitchens’ take:

“Faith is the surrender of the mind, it’s the surrender of reason, it’s the surrender of the only thing that makes us different from other animals. It’s our need to believe and to surrender our skepticism and our reason, our yearning to discard that and put all our trust or faith in someone or something, that is the sinister thing to me. … Out of all the virtues, all the supposed virtues, faith must be the most overrated”

Sometimes those who have faith also seek evidence and logic to back up their belief. This is a win-win for them because if the logic and evidence are found wanting, they can always then fall back on their faith. In any case – let’s take a look at alleged five reasons why God exists:

1.  God provides the best explanation of the origin of the universe.

This is the old, “Well, the universe didn’t come from nowhere” argument. He writes:

…it is highly probable that the universe had an absolute beginning. Since the universe, like everything else, could not have merely popped into being without a cause, there must exist a transcendent reality beyond time and space that brought the universe into existence.

Actually physicists debate whether or not our universe had a beginning. This cannot be taken as an uncontroversial premise. Stephen Hawking argued that our universe may be temporally finite yet unbound, just as it is spacially finite but unbound.

Even if we do accept the premise that our universe had a beginning, this may simply be embedded in a deeper physical reality, something to do with quantum fluctuations in space-time, or something equally incomprehensible.

Giving up on understanding space-time and just saying, “godidit” is not even an answer. This then creates the regression paradox of – well then where did God come from. And if God is transcendent and eternal, then why can’t the underlying physics of the universe be?  Postulating a God actually solves nothing, and certainly the existence of the universe is not a-priori evidence for something like a God.

2.  God provides the best explanation for the fine-tuning of the universe.

The anthropic principle again – the laws of the universe are fine-tuned to be compatible with life. Of course they are, because life exists. Craig argues God is the “best explanation” for this fine tuning:

There are three competing explanations of this remarkable fine-tuning: physical necessity, chance, or design. The first two are highly implausible, given the independence of the fundamental constants and quantities from nature’s laws and the desperate maneuvers needed to save the hypothesis of chance. That leaves design as the best explanation.

He is being prematurely dismissive, in order to unfairly favor his preferred explanation.  There are no “desperate maneuvers” necessary – certainly no more desperate than postulating a God. The universe may have the laws it does because they are necessary, for some underlying and yet undiscovered principle of physics. There may be many universes with various assortments of physical constants, and life arises only in those compatible with life.

3.  God provides the best explanation of objective moral values and duties.

This is perhaps his worst argument, because it is entirely circular. It’s not even a gap argument. He is essentially saying that objective morality exists because God gives it to us, and the existence of objective morality proves God exists. 

4.  God provides the best explanation of the historical facts

    Historic religeous facts can best be explained by religion.

5.  God can be personally known and experienced. 

This is more circular reasoning – Christians believe in God and this has transformed their lives, therefore God exists. This is a profoundly naive argument. Human psychology is a far simpler explanation. In fact decades of psychological research have shown that basic human psychology – the need for meaning, control, understanding, etc., all lend themselves to religious faith.

The good thing is that atheists tend to be very passionate people and want to believe in something. If they would only put aside the slogans for a moment and reexamine their worldview in light of the best philosophical, scientific, and historical evidence we have today, then they, too, would find Christmas worth celebrating!

Craig is saying that atheists are biased by narrow “slogan” thinking, when evidence and logic clearly shows that his faith is correct. He has only demonstrated, however, that it is he who is following narrow and fallacious thinking.

For me it is about family, friends, and taking time from our hectic lives to consider how much we appreciate  the people in our lives. Humans are social creatures – we survive and find meaning in our relationships with others. On the darkest day of the year, we shine a little light of love, companionship, and community into each-others lives. No faith required.

PSYCOLOGY OF MONEY

Why does paying with cash for a dinner feel worse than paying with a credit card?

“Pain of paying” is different between cash and credit cards, or even debits cards which I will talk about it later in this short essay.
Let’s firstly think about the difference between cash and credit cards. I will bring up three assumptions and to analyze them.
Firstly, the physical part, or you can call it the “Inert Nature”.  Cash is more vivid than credit cards. Imagine that you gave a dozen of cash to a cashier or the digital number of your credit card went down, which is more abstract. The abstract experience of parting with money is less painful than concrete experience of parting with the same amount of money.
Secondly, the actual time you pay the money, you can call it “Delayed Effect”. Cash was paid immediately, but credit card was only paid when the payment due date is coming. It is not the case that you don’t feel any pain while you are using a credit card. You will eventually feel the pain when you hold the bill with your hands.The pain was delayed.
Thirdly, which is my own immature assumption, is “Ratio effect”.  What I mean is the ratio between the money you paid and the total money you are taking at that time. For most cases, a credit card is like a big face value bill for $10,000 or more, but you won’t take such big amount of money in your wallet. Although ATM machines are easily available, but the effort you spend on ATM machine is an inherent cost for you which sometimes keep you from doing that, at least lures you to use credit cards.
Here is the problem. Imagine a person who took a credit card, the maximum overdraft of that card is $10,000 and another person took $1000 cash. They both bought a cell phone for 500 dollar. For the first one, the cell phone only occupied 1/20 of his total amount at that time, but for the other person, he lost a half of his money, although he may has a lot of money in the banks or under the mattress, but at that specific time, his “mental account” is just $1000.
To wrap it up, we can find there is one thing in common:” Attention”. The vitality of cash, Immediacy and the bigger ratio all indicate cash get more attention. We may conclude that the more attention a payment get, the more pain people will feel,

 How can we spend money in a useful way?

It is apparent that the “pain of paying” is a bad thing. No one would doubt that it did hurt us a lot. But, on the other hand, it can curb impulsive responses and thus reduce the purchase of vice and irrational products.
Two suggestions: when you are buying vice products or you realized that it is irrational to buy it, use cash! Last but not the least, always think about the opportunity cost of money in a general sense.

5

REALITY

To all appearances reality is dual. The objective world exists "out there" to be measured, but its existence is known only through subjective experience, which is "in here."  Both worlds need each other, and to be trapped in only one is unsatisfactory. The world turns into a dream only if you are conscious of your inner feelings, moods, sensations, and images. Yet if you rely only upon the physical world, you may wind up with meaningless data that don't provide any link to what is truly important in everyday life. This point is easy enough to see, but joining the two worlds into wholeness isn't easy.
The two worlds "in here" and "out there" are either split for a reason or it just happened that way.  If it just happened that way, fine.  Science will go on, and so will subjective experience, and the two will uneasily meet somewhere in the brain. But if "in here" and "out there" are split for a reason, that's a new story.  There have been many versions of the story so far. In many cultures, there was once a Golden Age that was innocent, pure, and untroubled (in other words, whole) while now we live in a fallen age, and our separation from God or the gods has resulted in a fragmented world.  Good is forced to come to terms with its opposite, evil, and therefore a reality of light and darkness envelops us. Needless, to say, such a story has not been satisfactory in a rational, scientific age.  It persists as myth and religion, which billions of people still prefer to science.
We come closer to a rational story via complementarity, because when complementarity holds that opposites have a hidden unity at the limit of observation (revealed through mathematics), a complete view of quantum physics is satisfied.  An opposite pair light wave and particle arise from the same source, and even if this source is beyond the five senses, lying in some invisible virtual domain, quantum mechanics can link the opposites and thus make every measurement turn out right.  By extension, can we say the same about "in here" and "out there"? Do they spring from a common source?
But this argument, which seems so common-sensical, is fallacious.  The principle of complementarity tells us that "in here" and "out there" aren't just compatible; they are necessary to each other, intertwined aspects of the whole. You can't have one without the other.  Grasping this fact is hard. Classical Western science, from the ancient Greeks through Newton and beyond, was based on atoms, molecules, and other physical "stuff" that exists on its own.  But just as there cannot be particles without waves; "out there" needs consciousness, "in here." This is a participatory universe, and leaving the participant out cannot be valid. In a fundamental sense, the universe is human, because we aren't just isolated observers like kids pressing their noses to the window of a bakery shop. The three-part model needs all three parts: observer, observed, and process of observation.
Many thinkers have tried to wriggle out of this apparent trap, but without success.  Our position is that their denial serves only to keep the human mind encaged, creating further and further problems for our collective and individual selves. We entitled this series of posts "Can Reality Set Us Free?" to underscore that by its very nature, the human mind is not limited, not even by its own short-sighted concepts. Boundaries and edges, the things that separate one thing from another, are always conceptual, manmade.  Where does your body stop?  From the everyday level of scale, your boundary is your skin.  From the atomic level of scale you and the planet are linked -- every atom in your body comes from water, earth, and air taken in from the planet.  From this perspective, human beings don't liver on the planet, we are the planet. Reality itself is a seamless flowing process where all phenomena are linked.  There are no actual boundaries.
But the most liberating boundary that anyone can break free of is the one that encircles the mind, like a fence around a corral, so that there is "my" mind and "your" mind (like two different horses inside the corral), and using a bigger fence, the "human" mind, which is so self-enclosed that outside the corral there is "no" mind.   Several of the quantum pioneers, such as Planck and Schrödinger, had enough clarity to see that this boundary, too, is manmade.  There is only one consciousness, in fact, and it must be basic to creation.
Reality, then, is boundless, immeasurable, and conscious. It cannot be otherwise if the three-part model and complementarity are correct, which has been demonstrated over and over.

BLIND BOY

A blind boy sat on the steps of a building with a hat by his feet. He held up a sign which said: “I am blind, please help.” There were only a few coins in the hat. 

A man was walking by. He took a few coins from his pocket and dropped them into the hat. He then took the sign, turned it around, and wrote some words. He put the sign back so that everyone who walked by would see the new words. 

Soon the hat began to fill up. A lot more people were giving money to the blind boy. That afternoon the man who had changed the sign came to see how things were. The boy recognized his footsteps and asked, “Were you the one who changed my sign this morning? What did you write?”

The man said, “I only wrote the truth. I said what you said but in a different way.” What he had written was: “Today is a beautiful day and I cannot see it.” Do you think the first sign and the second sign were saying the same thing? 

Of course both signs told people the boy was blind. But the first sign simply said the boy was blind. The second sign told people they were so lucky that they were not blind. Should we be surprised that the second sign was more effective? 

Moral of the story: Be thankful for what you have. Be creative. Be innovative. Think differently and positively.

COMPANY POLICY

Start with a cage containing five monkeys.
Inside the cage, hang a banana on a string and place a set of stairs under it. Before long, a monkey will go to the stairs and start to climb towards the banana. As soon as he touches the stairs, spray all of the other monkeys with cold water.
After a while, another monkey makes an attempt with the same result - all the other monkeys are sprayed with cold water. Pretty soon, when another monkey tries to climb the stairs, the other monkeys will try to prevent it.
Now, put away the cold water. Remove one monkey from the cage and replace it with a new one. The new monkey sees the banana and wants to climb the stairs. To his surprise and horror, all of the other monkeys attack him.
After another attempt and attack, he knows that if he tries to climb the stairs, he will be assaulted.
Next, remove another of the original five monkeys and replace it with a new one. The newcomer goes to the stairs and is attacked. The previous newcomer takes part in the punishment with enthusiasm! Likewise, replace a third original monkey with a new one, then a fourth, then the fifth. Every time the newest monkey takes to the stairs, he is attacked.
Most of the monkeys that are beating him have no idea why they were not permitted to climb the stairs or why they are participating in the beating of the newest monkey.
After replacing all the original monkeys, none of the remaining monkeys have ever been sprayed with cold water. Nevertheless, no monkey ever again approaches the stairs to try for the banana. Why not? Because as far as they know that's the way it's always been done round here.
And that, my friends, is how company policies are made.

TYMPH

Tempeh is an Indonesian fermented soy bean product, and is popular among vegetarians as a meat substitute for its nutty, hearty flavor. If you’re a newbie vegetarian (or just want to explore the veg scene) and are getting sick of your veggie burgers and tofu, tempeh is a great food product to learn how to prepare.

Tempeh can be used in sandwiches, curry, salads, and can be baked, sauteed, steamed, marinated and more! Introduce tempeh to your weekly cooking nights by diving into one of the 9 recipes.

5 PERCENT RULE

 If you can change any area of your life by a consistent five percent, the effects will be remarkable  This 5% rule applies to our personal ecosystems as well.   The smallest of changes  does alter  course of life.

Bad things happen fast, good things take time.  This is the caveat about how the five percent rule works.   Accidents, illnesses, forces of nature like hurricanes or tornados arrive in a moment, often with no warning.   Personal catastrophes like divorces can fall into the middle of your world like a tidal wave.  How is it possible that we could not see these things coming?   Relationships are fragile eco-systems and just as in the aftermath of a storm, rebuilding and recuperation is a process which takes the time and patience that is the daily work of sustaining.

It is easy to get burnt out in this daily work of relating, it is the hardest work that we are asked to do.    People are annoying, even the very best of them and especially when you live with them and are charged with their care.   This fact can apply to growing families or aging parents as easily as it does to our primary partner.   Keeping relationships healthy and being willing to heal the ones that are ailing is not a quick fix solution, it is a resolution to keep the five percent rule in action.   It is being willing to do the one extra act of kindness each day.  It is taking the time to listen even when you have heard enough.  It is finding the energy to be intimate even when you don’t feel connected.  It is the laundry and the dishes and one more trip to the grocery store.

The five percent rule is a good resolution to take on no matter what your life situation.  Another way of thinking about it is the continuous improvement plan, where we agree to remain vigilant to our own attitude and willingness to participate.  It acknowledges that we aren’t going to be perfect or expect perfection, but rather with realistic intentions, we strive to be just a bit better than yesterday.   It respects the time that it takes for small, seemingly imperceptible changes to be felt and experienced.

Making a resolution to live with a five percent improvement plan is a heroic act.  Not only do you courageously embrace the unpredictable and certain falling apart that happens in every life, but you simultaneously hold your heart open to trying to make the small acts of living softer and more bearable for the people you love.    It is a resolution that you can keep because it commits you to a process rather than an outcome and gives you the freedom to miss the mark some days.