Quixote at the Windmills
I want to crush free will. I want to scream into the scream, and I want you to hear it. I want to destroy something. I want to change you, for inherent in change there is destruction. I want my words to blow the roofs off of houses. I want to unsettle you. I want you to talk to you honestly, but more importantly, I want you to talk to me honestly.
I want to know if love exists. I want to sound my barbaric Yawp over the rooftops of the world. I want more control - I want less. I want to crush belief.
I don’t want problems that I can’t control.
My friends here, for whom I hold the utmost respect and love, have been using mind-altering substances with increasing frequency. Occasional indulgence in alcohol (to pick one at random) is fine, but drinking every night, or even every weekend becomes boring. I’m stuck in my room this cold Saturday night after a long day of avoiding my work - with no company save for my roommate (cheerfully watching “StarGate” for the next four hours, as he does every evening). My plans for the night crumbled a few hours ago; the offending party unaware of the significance that those plans had to me; me hesitant to admit to the offending party how much they did.
I am uncomfortable without control, but I love excitement. This is why I like debate - it’s a thrill, and I am always in control. The outcome is always in my hands - my failure is my own, so too my success. This is also why I don’t care for roller coasters - they are exciting, but involve a voluntary loss of control.
This is terrifying.
Have you ever been in a class when you’re really tired? An important class? And you start to doze off, and there are images in your head? You fight those images.
This is what it is to be an atheist.
We all have images in our head - voices, maybe - all the time. They say, “maybe you can talk to your dead grandmother,” “maybe these herbs really cure disease,” “maybe my room is haunted,” “maybe this is destiny.” Eventually, your little, tiny mind whispers, “That’s all fantasy. That’s make-believe. Those ideas are just voices in my head.”
To believe, to live forever, to know what the Pope and Usama bin Laden know inside of them, you just sit back and listen.
To be an atheist, you have to work all the time. You have to constantly fight off those voices. I don’t believe in Santa Clause or the tooth fairy or UFOs or my toaster talking to me at night. And I don’t believe in god.
This is tiring.
Somewhere far away, a friend lies alone in a hospital room with blank walls.
Healthy bone marrow makes stem cells that grow into the three types of blood cells: red blood cells, white blood cells and platelets. Her bone marrow makes too many immature white blood cells. Normal white blood cells turn into a type of white blood cell called granulocytes - her white blood cells do not. At the same time, her marrow cannot grow enough normal red blood cells or platelets because it’s too busy compensating for the lack of mature white blood cells.
I cannot understand this, though I am hardly to blame, because neither can any doctor in the world. No one knows why this condition, known as “Acute Myelogenous Leukemia,” begins. It’s not genetic, except for sometimes it is. It’s not inherited, except for sometimes it is. And it’s not fatal, except for it is.
My computer got too hot recently, and part of the motherboard was destroyed. It sits on my desk now. I want you to know that what I am looking at fills me with awe.
All the parts no doubt have names and functions. But it is an artifact of such thrilling complexity that if you were to tell me it was the work of a fabulously gifted sculptor, or a scale model of a city on another planet, I would not find either concept hard to believe. It has all kinds of strange structures of different colors and shapes - blocks, cylinders, towers, discs, platforms - and they all seem to be connected by an incredibly complex system of pathways, both above ground, and - even more staggeringly - beneath the surface (as revealed on the under side of the board).
If only one object like this existed, - and if nobody knew what it was - I could see it being revered - probably worshiped - as one of Earth’s greatest treasures - a thing of fantastic beauty, of dazzling intricacy, and of mysterious order - in fact, a whole little universe.
But there are billions of these things! They are ridiculously common. How can something so marvelous be at the same time so mundane?
Recently, a mutual friend had parents visit with the friend who suffers from Acute Myelogenous Leukemia. I became the topic of their conversation, and the parents joked that I was going to fail out of school and come up with a cure for Acute Myelogenous Leukemia. By this point, you should know me well enough to realize that I took this as a literal challenge, so I began reading whatever I could find on Acute Myelogenous Leukemia. I blew through the websites on the subject, and then through the books in the Goucher library. I ordered some books online. I blew through those. I still don’t understand Acute Myelogenous Leukemia, and far away, my friend still lies alone in a hospital room with blank walls.
In my attempts to exercise some control over the situations that I’ve described above, a disturbing trend has arisen in my thoughts. At first, I found myself shouting it down with all of the other nonsensical voices that pop up from time to time, but I find myself consumed by this new voice.
I’ll be sitting alone, quietly wasting my time, when the little voice whispers, “Your brain is like a machine in many ways, isn’t it?” I think of the motherboard - so complex. The voice is gone.
“The brain is composed of cells and neurons and chemicals and pathways and electrical activity that all conform to physical laws. When part of your brain is stimulated in one specific way, could it respond any way it wants, or would it always respond in one specific way?” I know the answer, and I don’t like it. The voice persists - I listen.
“If your brain’s actions are not controlled by rules, that can only mean the brain acts randomly. On the other hand, if your brain is guided by rules, which in turn guide you, then you have no free will. You are programmed. There is no in between; your life is either random or predetermined. Which is it?”
For once, I sit back.
“Imagine a copper penny that is exactly like an ordinary penny except that for this discussion it has consciousness. It knows it is a coin and it knows that you sometimes flip it. And it knows that no external force dictates whether it comes up heads or tails on any individual flip. If the penny’s consciousness were like human consciousness, it would analyze the situation and conclude that it had free will. When it wanted to come up heads, and heads was the result, the penny would confirm its belief in its power to choose. When it came up tails instead, it would blame its own lack of commitment, or assume God had a hand in it. The imaginary coin would believe that things don’t just ‘happen’ without causes. If nothing external controlled the results of the flips, a reasonable penny would assume that the control came from its own will, influenced perhaps by God’s will, assuming it were a religious penny.
“The penny’s belief in its own role would be wrong, but the penny’s belief in God’s role would be right. Probability dictates that the penny must sometimes come up tails even when the penny chooses to be heads.
“We believe that when our brains make choices, we move our arms and legs and mouths to make things happen. The penny has no way to turn its choices into reality, but we do.
“But we also believe in the scientific principle that any specific cause, no matter how complex, must have a specific effect. Therefore, we believe two realities that cannot both be true. If one is true, the other must be false.
“The brain is fundamentally a machine. It’s an organic machine with chemical and electrical properties. When an electrical signal is formed, it can only make one specific thing happen. It can’t choose to sometimes make you think of a cow and sometimes make you fall in love. That one specific electrical impulse, in the one specific place in your brain, can have one and only one result on your actions.”
Again I eye the motherboard, now with a sense of spite. And the voice, sensing weakness, quotes to me the argument I have used so many times when attacking the merit of belief:
“We can never understand true reality. If two models both explain the same facts, it is more rational to use the simpler one. It is a matter of convenience.”
I can’t make bone marrow create healthy white blood cells. I can’t make my friends stop drinking. I can’t make you love me.
A little voice tells me “If you crush free will, then this is not your fault.”
So tonight I sit alone with the dull thuds of a drunken party resonating in the walls - bodies and objects in collision. Pennies flipping. And for the first time in my life, honestly and with humility, I begin to pray. Not to God - not “to” anything. Just prayer; the intensity of my hope as dwarfed by the crushing reality of probability as the last stars still visible through the smog outside my window still burn defiantly against the backdrop of a vast and uncaring sky.
I want to know if love exists. I want to sound my barbaric Yawp over the rooftops of the world. I want more control - I want less. I want to crush belief.
I don’t want problems that I can’t control.
My friends here, for whom I hold the utmost respect and love, have been using mind-altering substances with increasing frequency. Occasional indulgence in alcohol (to pick one at random) is fine, but drinking every night, or even every weekend becomes boring. I’m stuck in my room this cold Saturday night after a long day of avoiding my work - with no company save for my roommate (cheerfully watching “StarGate” for the next four hours, as he does every evening). My plans for the night crumbled a few hours ago; the offending party unaware of the significance that those plans had to me; me hesitant to admit to the offending party how much they did.
I am uncomfortable without control, but I love excitement. This is why I like debate - it’s a thrill, and I am always in control. The outcome is always in my hands - my failure is my own, so too my success. This is also why I don’t care for roller coasters - they are exciting, but involve a voluntary loss of control.
This is terrifying.
Have you ever been in a class when you’re really tired? An important class? And you start to doze off, and there are images in your head? You fight those images.
This is what it is to be an atheist.
We all have images in our head - voices, maybe - all the time. They say, “maybe you can talk to your dead grandmother,” “maybe these herbs really cure disease,” “maybe my room is haunted,” “maybe this is destiny.” Eventually, your little, tiny mind whispers, “That’s all fantasy. That’s make-believe. Those ideas are just voices in my head.”
To believe, to live forever, to know what the Pope and Usama bin Laden know inside of them, you just sit back and listen.
To be an atheist, you have to work all the time. You have to constantly fight off those voices. I don’t believe in Santa Clause or the tooth fairy or UFOs or my toaster talking to me at night. And I don’t believe in god.
This is tiring.
Somewhere far away, a friend lies alone in a hospital room with blank walls.
Healthy bone marrow makes stem cells that grow into the three types of blood cells: red blood cells, white blood cells and platelets. Her bone marrow makes too many immature white blood cells. Normal white blood cells turn into a type of white blood cell called granulocytes - her white blood cells do not. At the same time, her marrow cannot grow enough normal red blood cells or platelets because it’s too busy compensating for the lack of mature white blood cells.
I cannot understand this, though I am hardly to blame, because neither can any doctor in the world. No one knows why this condition, known as “Acute Myelogenous Leukemia,” begins. It’s not genetic, except for sometimes it is. It’s not inherited, except for sometimes it is. And it’s not fatal, except for it is.
My computer got too hot recently, and part of the motherboard was destroyed. It sits on my desk now. I want you to know that what I am looking at fills me with awe.
All the parts no doubt have names and functions. But it is an artifact of such thrilling complexity that if you were to tell me it was the work of a fabulously gifted sculptor, or a scale model of a city on another planet, I would not find either concept hard to believe. It has all kinds of strange structures of different colors and shapes - blocks, cylinders, towers, discs, platforms - and they all seem to be connected by an incredibly complex system of pathways, both above ground, and - even more staggeringly - beneath the surface (as revealed on the under side of the board).
If only one object like this existed, - and if nobody knew what it was - I could see it being revered - probably worshiped - as one of Earth’s greatest treasures - a thing of fantastic beauty, of dazzling intricacy, and of mysterious order - in fact, a whole little universe.
But there are billions of these things! They are ridiculously common. How can something so marvelous be at the same time so mundane?
Recently, a mutual friend had parents visit with the friend who suffers from Acute Myelogenous Leukemia. I became the topic of their conversation, and the parents joked that I was going to fail out of school and come up with a cure for Acute Myelogenous Leukemia. By this point, you should know me well enough to realize that I took this as a literal challenge, so I began reading whatever I could find on Acute Myelogenous Leukemia. I blew through the websites on the subject, and then through the books in the Goucher library. I ordered some books online. I blew through those. I still don’t understand Acute Myelogenous Leukemia, and far away, my friend still lies alone in a hospital room with blank walls.
In my attempts to exercise some control over the situations that I’ve described above, a disturbing trend has arisen in my thoughts. At first, I found myself shouting it down with all of the other nonsensical voices that pop up from time to time, but I find myself consumed by this new voice.
I’ll be sitting alone, quietly wasting my time, when the little voice whispers, “Your brain is like a machine in many ways, isn’t it?” I think of the motherboard - so complex. The voice is gone.
“The brain is composed of cells and neurons and chemicals and pathways and electrical activity that all conform to physical laws. When part of your brain is stimulated in one specific way, could it respond any way it wants, or would it always respond in one specific way?” I know the answer, and I don’t like it. The voice persists - I listen.
“If your brain’s actions are not controlled by rules, that can only mean the brain acts randomly. On the other hand, if your brain is guided by rules, which in turn guide you, then you have no free will. You are programmed. There is no in between; your life is either random or predetermined. Which is it?”
For once, I sit back.
“Imagine a copper penny that is exactly like an ordinary penny except that for this discussion it has consciousness. It knows it is a coin and it knows that you sometimes flip it. And it knows that no external force dictates whether it comes up heads or tails on any individual flip. If the penny’s consciousness were like human consciousness, it would analyze the situation and conclude that it had free will. When it wanted to come up heads, and heads was the result, the penny would confirm its belief in its power to choose. When it came up tails instead, it would blame its own lack of commitment, or assume God had a hand in it. The imaginary coin would believe that things don’t just ‘happen’ without causes. If nothing external controlled the results of the flips, a reasonable penny would assume that the control came from its own will, influenced perhaps by God’s will, assuming it were a religious penny.
“The penny’s belief in its own role would be wrong, but the penny’s belief in God’s role would be right. Probability dictates that the penny must sometimes come up tails even when the penny chooses to be heads.
“We believe that when our brains make choices, we move our arms and legs and mouths to make things happen. The penny has no way to turn its choices into reality, but we do.
“But we also believe in the scientific principle that any specific cause, no matter how complex, must have a specific effect. Therefore, we believe two realities that cannot both be true. If one is true, the other must be false.
“The brain is fundamentally a machine. It’s an organic machine with chemical and electrical properties. When an electrical signal is formed, it can only make one specific thing happen. It can’t choose to sometimes make you think of a cow and sometimes make you fall in love. That one specific electrical impulse, in the one specific place in your brain, can have one and only one result on your actions.”
Again I eye the motherboard, now with a sense of spite. And the voice, sensing weakness, quotes to me the argument I have used so many times when attacking the merit of belief:
“We can never understand true reality. If two models both explain the same facts, it is more rational to use the simpler one. It is a matter of convenience.”
I can’t make bone marrow create healthy white blood cells. I can’t make my friends stop drinking. I can’t make you love me.
A little voice tells me “If you crush free will, then this is not your fault.”
So tonight I sit alone with the dull thuds of a drunken party resonating in the walls - bodies and objects in collision. Pennies flipping. And for the first time in my life, honestly and with humility, I begin to pray. Not to God - not “to” anything. Just prayer; the intensity of my hope as dwarfed by the crushing reality of probability as the last stars still visible through the smog outside my window still burn defiantly against the backdrop of a vast and uncaring sky.