Living the Startup Life

My good friend Ian Selvarajah asked me what it means to be a “true skeptic.”  It is a great question and I am very happy to explain what it means and what I believe in.  An important note:

• I am not defending skepticism nor am I arguing that it is the “right point of view.”  I am merely explaining my beliefs and what it means to be a skeptic
• I believe that everyone is entitled to their own opinions and I respect all religions and all points of view

I am a skeptic, which means that I believe:

• There is no absolute right or wrong
• There is no absolute knowledge

I will break up my argument into two posts.  This first post will address the question: Is there an absolute right or wrong?

Lets start off by assuming that you believe there is an absolute right or wrong.  An absolute truth if you will.  I will ask you, “If there is an absolute right or wrong, then this implies that there must be someone to judge what is right and what is wrong.”  By mere definition, an absolute right or wrong means that someone or something has created rules to this universe and our existence that we must follow.  If we follow the rules, then we are doing right; if we break the rules, then we are doing wrong.  Therefore, the fact that you believe there is an absolute right or wrong means that you believe someone created the rules and is judging everyone.

[Note: My mom is Buddhist and she believes that there is no God; rather, she believes that there is energy in the universe.  Doing right means that you are doing something agreeable to the energy and that you are making your life better.  Doing wrong means that you are doing something against the energy and that you will be punished (punished is a bad word to use here because it requires someone to judge and act, but work with me here) by karma later on.  For this post, I will not argue against the energy theory that Buddhism provides.]

Ok, so now we have concluded that if you believe in an absolute truth, then you believe in a creator of the rules and a judge.  Notice that I have not said God yet.  Now I will ask you, “What characteristics must this ‘creator’ have if he is able to create all the rules that ALL must follow.”  You will answer that he must be all powerful [The creator is ALL POWERFUL].  I will ask you, “What characteristic must this ‘creator’ have if he is able to know what everyone is doing and is able to judge everyone on all of their actions.”  You will answer that he must be all knowing [The creator is ALL KNOWING].  Now I will ask, “what must he have in order to be able to rule over the rules forever?”  The answer is that he must be eternal [The creator is ETERNAL].  Last question guys: what must he have so that he doesn’t change the rules suddenly so that we have no idea what to do or who to follow?  He must be all good [The creator is ALL GOOD].

Ok, so we have concluded that the creator is all powerful, all knowing, eternal, and all good.  We have just concluded that if you believe in an absolute truth, then you believe that there is a god. So I just proved that if you believe in truth, then you believe in God.  You can’t believe that there is right and wrong without believing in God.

Well that was fun.  So in order for me to disprove that there is an absolute truth, I would have to disprove God.  Before and try to do that, I must again remind you that as a skeptic, I allow for people to believe in whatever they want.  It is not my place to prove of disprove anything.  However, where is the fun in that?  I love debate and discussion.  The question of whether God exists or not is truly fascinating and one that I will try and tackle right now:

…[a good 5 minutes has gone by]  Ok, so I decided that I have not found a good argument to disprove God because that would mean that I would have to disprove faith.  Ian writes a great article on why be believes in God.  The best thing for me to do is to argue his points on why he believes in God.  I will do this in a later post.  For right now, the best I can do is ask some questions about why you believe in God:

• Do you believe you have free will?  If the answer is Yes, then you can’t believe in God.  If you believe in God, then a consequence is that you have no free will.  We will get into a deeper discussion of this on my reply post to Ian.
• Do you believe in Heaven and Hell?  If the answer is No, then you either believe that 1) There is no afterlife.  God judges you in your mortal life and you will receive rewards or punishment in your mortal life.  2) There are no rewards or punishment for right and wrong.  You simply interact with the people in your mortal life and you make life more pleasant by doing right and make life worse by doing wrong.

I can even ask some basic questions like:

• How do you know that there is an absolute right or wrong?
  • Answer: Because it is written in the Bible
• How do you know that the person who wrote the Bible was lying himself?
  • Because the words were written by God (I don’t know about this one but I’m sure religious people would argue in this way)
• How do you even know that there is a God?
  • Answer: Because I have faith.

And that is where the argument is at a stop-still right now.  I can argue every point of view except for “faith.”  I can even argue the beautiful design theory (or perfect design theory) that Ian brings up in his post.  The argument states the universe is so perfect that it is more likely that God created it than that it just was created by itself.  I will attempt to destroy this argument in a later post.

I can go on and on but now I want to tackle the consequences of believing that there is no right or wrong.  If you really think that there is no right or wrong, then there are certain consequences that arise from it:

• You cannot judge people
• You cannot impose your way of doing things onto others
• You cannot defend your points of view (which I am not doing in this post.  I am merely offering my opinions and explaining what it means to be a skeptic)
• You pretty much can’t assert things as a matter of fact.

Even the simplest things like, “This pen is blue” cannot be said by a skeptic as if it were the truth.  To a skeptic, everything is opinions.  It is my opinion that this pen is blue.  A person can walk up to me and say that this pen is red.  As a skeptic, I cannot argue with him and try to prove that this pen is actually red.  He is entitled to his opinion.

As a skeptic, I cannot impose by beliefs of “Democracy” onto another country.  As a skeptic, I cannot say that slavery is wrong.  So as you can see, being a skeptic is hard.  It’s pretty much impossible to function in society.  I can’t even say that in my culture, it is wrong to engage in slavery.  Cultural skepticism is fundamentally flawed.  Please let me know if you would like to argue why culture skepticism is flawed.

The most die hard critics will argue with me that the fact that I am writing this post proves that I am not a Skeptic.  I cannot write this post as a Skeptic.  To that I will answer, “Maybe I’m not really a skeptic.  A more accurate description of my beliefs would be that I love debate and that I love to challenge everything.  I do not like being told what to do nor do I like for someone to tell me what is right or wrong.  I am still trying to figure out everything for myself.”

I look forward to hearing your replies about whether there is an absolute right or wrong.

I recently read a post by Brad Fults where he writes about Religion and Compassion in the Modern World. This topic truly fascinates me and I decided to give my two cents. [Disclaimer: I respect everyones own opinions and I don't feel that my ideas or beliefs are any more correct than yours. I guess you can say that I am a true skeptic]

Brad writes responses to some quotes taken by Karen Armstrong’s speech. Since I am a true skeptic, I will try to show that Brad’s responses (as well as Karen’s ideas) are only opinions and not matters of fact. My opinions are of course only true to me (seeing how I am a skeptic), and I am not right or wrong on any of them:

Compassion is crucial and necessary

Brad writes that compassion is “crucial and necessary.” Why is compassion crucial and necessary for? If you mean that compassion is crucial and necessary for life, then that means that there cannot be life without compassion. This is flawed because there can be life without compassion. There can be a man who is truly not compassionate and that is able to live out his entire life happily. If you mean that compassion is crucial and necessary for happiness, then this again is flawed because there are people who are absolutely not compassionate and that are still happy. You can argue by asking, “name one person who is not compassionate and is truly happy.” I don’t know anyone myself, but then this would lead us to argue about the definition of “compassion” and “happiness.” We can argue this on a later post or if Brad decides to bring it up.

People want to be religious (said by Karen)

I feel that Brad argues this point well. I would like to add a couple of things. I feel that people are religious for two reasons: 1) They grew up with religion, it has been indoctrinated in them, and they know nothing but religion. These people can’t help to be religious because they know nothing else. 2) People are scared of uncertainty and want to know answers. People are afraid of death and the thought of leaving this world completely scares us. Therefore, people create the idea of God and the afterlife to explain how things work, why things happen, and to feel the security of still living on forever after we die.

If the prevailing available choice is to rest one’s morals upon mythical and fundamentally subjective beliefs, it is positively foolish to expect the outcome to be at all rational or cohesive.

Brad is saying that the beliefs or religious people are subjective (please correct me if I’m wrong in my interpretation Brad). I feel that he is wrong (then again, if I’m a true skeptic, I can’t believe that anyone is “wrong”) because religious people do not believe that their beliefs and ideals are subjective. They take their beliefs as absolute truths. According to a religious person, God exists as a matter of fact. I think the difficulty is trying to show that religious peoples beliefs are actually not absolute truths; they are actually beliefs (Brad, this may be what you were trying to say).

If you grew up in a religious house, then you were taught that God is real and that you must pay the utmost respect to him. Why do you believe that God absolutely exists? If you answer “the Bible says so,” then I will ask you, “how do you know that the people who wrote the Bible were telling the truth?” Since we’re on that topic, how do we know anything for certain?” I will tackle the problem of knowledge and absolute certainty on a later post. The point here is that religious people have a faith, and not absolute knowledge. Now we must argue the definition of “faith.” Is it knowledge or is it belief? Can we know that God exists a priori (without experience) or must we know him a posteriori (need experience). Think about this: if no one ever told you that God existed, would you still believe that he exists? What you’ll say is that civilizations across the world all developed an idea of a God independently on their own. My answer is that it is human nature to be curious and to want answers. Humans created God to answer their questions.

There need be no mystery in human affairs

What do you mean by this Brad? If you mean that everything in the world can be explained scientifically, then I belief you are wrong (again, I am not allowed to say “wrong” since I am a skeptic). Lets use the example of gravity. How do we know that gravity works? We know because we have all head a pen up in the air, and when we let it go, it falls to the floor. This has worked time and time again in the past so we believe that it will work again in the future. And this is where the flaw lies: just because it has worked in the past, it does not mean that it will work in the future. Think about it like this: There is a pitch-black, infinite place with a brick wall in the middle (kind of like the great wall of china). We are on one side of the wall with a flashlight. What we see using the flashlight is like the present that we are in. What we have traversed (all the parts of the brick wall that we have seen) is like the past. We have walked for many many miles and we have seen no openings to the brick wall. However, this does not mean that 10 steps ahead we will not find an opening. All we know is what we have traversed, and we cannot be sure of the future.

So then you can ask me, “Well, if you’re not sure that gravity will work tomorrow, why don’t you jump off a cliff tomorrow since it’s 50/50 chance that gravity will still be there.” I of course will not jump off a cliff because I know that I will fall. But I just proved that I cannot Know that I will fall. Maybe my “know” is similar to what religious people use as “faith.”

A movement away from arbitrary subjective wish-based morality and toward a true manifestation of the golden rule: humanism

What do you mean by humanism is the “golden rule.” Are you saying that “humanism” is the absolute right way to live your life? What are you basing this belief off of? I think that you have done a terrific job on refuting Karen’s opinions but that this sentence cannot be justified. There is a lot of different kinds of Humanism so I will let Brad argue why Humanism is the “right” way to live and I will respond.

The beauty of truly integrated humanism is that the solution to this question just comes naturally.

Again, you cannot say this. What do you mean that it comes “naturally”? Do you mean that people naturally are humanists and that it is unnatural to be religious? Why then have civilizations all over the world created their own forms of religion on their own? You cannot say that humanism is “natural” because it is not part of our instincts to be a humanist. Our instincts are too eat, sleep, survive, and reproduce. This is what comes naturally to us, not humanism.

These are only my humble opinions. I await your responses.