MoS Day 16 ~ Have some philosophical ramblings!

This is an answer to the following question, posed by :
Can human beings "live" logically without superstition?

If we live with the concept that there are no souls, when we die, we no longer exist. Shouldn't it not matter to us whether we live or die then?

For example, if we live our lives happily and die in 80 years, the world no longer exists to us, because we no longer exist. It doesn't apply to us anymore, because we don't live in it. Our actions and efforts are, well, "pointless".

The same thing could be said about dying tomorrow. And for that matter, even if you become immortal, what's the point? Because you could just as well be dead and no longer care about your dreams, goals, regrets, disappointments, fears.


Can human beings “live” logically, without superstition?
I’m noticing a pattern in my immediate reactions to these kinds of questions, which is: I go for the concepts and terms. I basically go: “But what do you mean by that???”, which I can imagine getting real annoying, so I’ll apologise in advance. Sorry for being annoying.

Getting on with the question, you equate “living logically” with “living without superstition”, without believing that there are things like souls, or an afterlife. So basically, can we humans live without believing in things we can’t prove with logic and/or science? (correct me if I’m translating this wrong)

Then, you ask a second question: If we can live logically, should it then matter to us whether we live or die? (I got rid of the double negative)

So, the TL;DR answer to both questions is: I don’t know. But that is even more annoying and also not really interesting, so let’s dive into this a little deeper, shall we?

First and foremost, I think if we would be able to live without believing anything we can’t prove with science, without superstition, as you said, it would be (1) very difficult for us, and (2) a big change of worldview for a lot of people. Science as we know it hasn’t been around for that long (especially if you compare it to how long the universe has been around) and in its absence, people have used other explanations to define the world around them. These other means of explaining and interacting with the world (religion, myths, stories and a whole lot of antropomorphization) would most probably fall in the superstition category, would they not? But they have been around for a long time, so if we are able to believing in any of these things, you could argue that it would be a radical change of the way we view and interact with the world from what humans have done for centuries, and that it definitely would be difficult.

Then again, you could respond to that with Aristotle. Because Aristotle isn’t usually regarded the father of the natural sciences for nothing. He started doing empirical experiments the way we still do to this day, and he did it more than 2300 years ago (if my math is correct), so really, the scientific worldview isn’t that old, and has been in the making for a long time.

Somehow, though, even though (natural) sciences have made leaps and bounds of progress over the last years, there are still people believing stuff that can definitely not be proven by any scientific theory. So the question remains: Can we live without believing in that kind of stuff. I think that theoretically, we can. I mean, there are people who’ll only believe something when it’s been proven by science.

But the thing is: there are so many answers that we’ll never know. I am not a scientist, but I’m pretty sure I read or heard somewhere that in quantum physics, we can predict where certain particles will turn up, but we can’t prove why they turn up where they do. We can’t prove with science that there is a God, but we also can’t prove that there isn’t a God (or even several). We can’t prove that there is an afterlife, or be sure of reïncarnation, or be sure that there is nothing. Not with the empirical evidence we have now.

Would it matter to us if we died or not, given that we can live logically? Well, any living creature has a drive to survive (I don’t think it’s called that, but you know what I mean), so I think it would. And as for having no purpose in life, we have already been struggling with the purpose or no purpose question for much longer than you’d think. There are people converting to and from religion, everyday, and every one of them struggles or has struggled and definitely will struggle with the question of whether or not there is a purpose to life. Personally, I think it’s all about finding or creating your own purpose, why dependent on some awesome plan? Make your own!

I think, ultimately, life is scary and too vast for a human mind to grasp easily. So too, with the world, the universe and everything. And we humans, well, we love our analogies, our metaphors and our myths to make these awesome and vast concepts smaller and easier to understand. So can we humans live logically? Maybe, but do we want to?

This brings me to a thought that’s been floating around my head for a while now, and that I initially wanted to work out into a ful fledged review, but who cares: In Life of Pi, in the introduction (which I encourage everyone to read, I don’t read introductions a whole lot, but this one was marvellous), the writer recounts how he found the story that’s told in the book. He recounts how he was traveling in India and encountered a person that basically told him “Oh, you’re a writer? Well I have a story for you, a story that will make you believe in God.” And ofcourse, the writer is sceptical of that, as was I. Well, I read the book and I can tell you that I am still a firm agnostic, whether or not there is a God somewhere I don’t know, but I’m not excluding the posibillity that there is something out there. Thing is, I don’t think you are supposed to take this message quite so literally.

This next bit contains a spoiler for the book, as well as the movie, so skip over it if you mind those.

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The book Life of Pi tells the story of a boy that survives a shipwreck and is stranded on a lifeboat in the Pacific Ocean with a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker for two hundred and twenty-seven days. After he’s rescued, he recounts his fantastical and unlikely story to two officials from the Japanese Ministry of Transport, who don’t quite believe it. After a while of needling, Pi tells them another story, one where there is no tiger, and he shares his lifeboat with a cannibalistic cook, a Taiwanese sailor with a broken leg, and his own mother. The latter two are killed by the cook, who is then eventually killed and eaten by Pi himself. After finishing this story, Pi asks the officials which story they prefer: the one without animals or the one with animals.

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And I think in this lies the message that this story tries to convey. The story won’t necessarily make you believe in God, but it will make you consider: which story would you prefer? The story where everything can be proven by logic or science? Or the one where maybe not everything can be proven and some stuff may seem highly unlikely or even impossible, but that may feature things like surviving two hundred and twenty-seven days in a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger, a mysterious island and some guy  on a cloud that is always interested in what’s going on in your life? You choose.