The Arrogance of Philosophy(ers)

I'm not sure why we separate 'philosophical truths' from 'empirical truths'. Both epistemological systems are based on the same foundation of experience - our own existence and the usefulness of our five senses. All that we know, we know through our five senses. We have developed words that represent things we have experienced through our senses in order to communicate those experiences to other people and even communicate them to ourselves. 'Philosophical laws' like the law of non-contradiction, the law of identity and the validity of syllogisms, and even 'mathematical laws' of association and distribution have been discovered through our experience of the natural world, an experience that continues to grow. These laws do not come from some special, isolated part of the brain that reasons independent of experience.

I am not a linguist, nor have I studied the development of language in a university. However, from observing my own linguistic development and the development of people around me and having a bit of knowledge about the development of language as it relates to our brain, I have learnt a few things. When young, much of our experience is jumbled together in a few words. All trees are trees and trees alone. If you tell a child that this tree is a portugal (puteegal) tree and the other is a lime tree, it may be slightly confusing to them at first. They would either think that all of them are the same thing, or that they are all completely different. It is difficult for a child to appreciate subtlety. The ability to discriminate and categorise, analyse and synthesise are skills that develop with us as we grow and are aided by education. As our experience of the world increases, we create new words, and we apply the discovered laws of reasoning to these experiences to make sense of them.

Now, our brains have been able to take concepts from the natural world, combine them with others, expand them, twist them, turn them inside out to make them into something 'new'. However, these things are not new, but re-worked or re-done, exaggerated or reduced, old things. We call this ability 'imagination'. The end results of our imagination - like Superman, Batman, Pokemon or the Perfect Spouse - are built with old colours and concepts we have experienced but are not things we have experienced in themselves.

In and Out of God - How I try to live my life as an atheist

One of the most frequently asked questions I have had thrown in my direction since by de-conversion is "What is the point of your life now?" The question makes the assumption that I knew what the point of my life was when I was a believer and that that is different 'now', and it does so wrongly. When I was a Catholic, I never understood the idea of being made for a specific purpose. Although I didn't understand it, I did try to live my life guided by that belief and I surrendered all that I was to achieve this goal of doing God's will.

Obviously, God never came out and told me what he wanted me to do so I imagined that he was asking me to be a priest. I came to this conclusion because I was passionate about evangelisation, service, and leadership. It seemed like the perfect fit. I've given that up though because the whole concept of God having a plan for each of us is rendered implausible by the vast number of people who never achieve anything close to what they thought God planted in their hearts to do. Mother Teresa's crisis of faith shook my understanding of this from the core and I never turned back. We were told that 'peace' was the gift given to those who were doing God's will, and here was this usually inspirational woman, broken from within and questioning the existence of her beloved Saviour. Some call this the "dark night of the soul" and I love the poetry of the string of words, but having gone through it myself, I know it is the despair one feels confronting the unimaginable possibility that what you believed was truly unbelievable.

So just how do I gain meaning from my life? Well I must answer this question with another question. What do you mean by having a meaning for life? Usually, the belief in a divine purpose that was destined before we were born is the source of meaning. Even in the absence of clear knowledge of what that purpose is, the mere idea of the possibility gives a person hope. Now, not believing in a deity does not afford me this right to believe in a divine purpose for my life. I do not think that I am born to do a task that only I can do well, and frankly, I am relieved. I'd hate to have such a pivotal, historical role and fail. It may be hard to believe when you are a believer - it was hard for me to believe as well - that living without God can be 'meaningful', and that very human emotions like hope and love are seen as illusory. All of this is utterly untrue.

In and Out of God - God and religious experiences

The Final Frontier


If you've been with me throughout this journey, this post is the penultimate of the "In and Out of God" series. My story of faith began with a religious experience and it is that experience that sustained my faith throughout the years of doubt and inner turmoil. As I stated in my last entry, God had receded beyond sight, but there remained this one thing, this one encounter that I had with Him which made me literally swoon, made me want to give all that I was to Him and Him alone. 

In 2005, a motley group of four young men all found one other in Presentation College San Fernando and formed a prayer group. Coincidentally, they had all come back to school with a new zeal for their faiths as a result of Confirmation classes and Life in the Spirit seminars. They started holding meetings in the chapel to read scripture, sing and pray. I was not in the least bit interested in the group until a friend of mine started attending their meetings. This came as a shock to me because he was notorious for his ease with obscenity and stories of sexual exploits.

One day, he asked me to come with him and I couldn't resist satisfying my curiosity. So there I was, standing in the second row, surrounded by no more than 8 young men, singing and clapping their hands in praise of Jesus Christ. Then, without any warning, they all stopped singing and started unmelodiously 'praising' God. This alone was too much to handle but they threw in some glossolalia to test my tenacity. What on earth was this madness? I wasn't a church-goer myself, but I had some respect for sacred things and I felt they were making a mockery of God. My friend saw the discomfort marked on my face and told me not to say anything. Let's just say, I didn't make the trek up to the chapel the next time around.

In and Out of God - God and Evolution

Just a theory

The only encounter that I had in my religious past with the theory of evolution was in Biology class. The teacher stood in front of the class and monotonously droned about black butterflies eventually outnumbering the white butterflies because they were the same colour of tree trunks and that natural selection was the vehicle for this occurrence and that this is what we meant by evolution. Did you feel as bored reading the last sentence as I felt writing it?

I did have a secondary encounter with the theory though, and surely enough it was in a Religious Knowledge class. I usually had docile, risk averse,  Religious Knowledge teachers as far as I can remember, but in Form 5, our teacher was very much involved in his faith. I remember him telling us that evolution was 'just a theory' and that it had recently been disproved. And just like that I was convinced. After all, he was a teacher, and I had much better things to worry about - like getting all 1's in 'CXC' (CSEC). How I got a 1 in Biology baffles me to this day.

It's not until I was 20 years old that the theory reared its head again like an atavism. What better a place to do this than in a group of young Catholic males, motivated from within and burning with passion for intellectual evangelisation. We wanted to save Catholicism from immature theology among the laity and defend Catholicism from creeping atheism. One in our bunch was fond of evolution and I would bounce my skepticism off of him. He dealt with them like a professional. Thanks to his responses, and that wonderful book by Jerry Coyne that he lent me, I now see that evolution is the best explanation for the diversity of life we see on earth.

Get this book.

My acknowledging the truth of evolution did have its accompanying problems, unfortunately. But first, let me give a simple explanation of evolution for those who misunderstand it. Then I will refocus on my struggle with accepting it alongside my faith.

"Life on earth evolved gradually beginning with one primitive species - perhaps a self-replicating molecule - that lived more than 3.5 billion years ago; it then branched out over time, throwing off many new and diverse species; and the mechanism for most (but not all) of evolutionary change is natural selection". 


Take a deep breath. First of all, the theory of evolution does not say anything about the origin of life on earth. That's an entirely different question. Hopefully the following example would help to understand the theory better -

In and Out of God - God and prayer

One Unanswered Prayer

Even though I wasn’t as close to him as everyone else was, his passion for life impacted me enough to suck tears from my eyes when I heard about his passing. He was the first and only person I have ever cried for at a funeral. That probably says something.

I was sitting on a chair in my room one night. The memory is a bit hazy so I can’t say exactly what I was doing, unfortunately. What I do remember, was fearfully answering the phone at 3am in the morning only to have my fear hyperbolically realised. He was in a car accident and was now in the Intensive Care Unit of San Fernando General Hospital. The sleepy voice on the phone advised me, “Pray boy, pray. Jus’ pray.”

The next day, a large group of us were gathered in the prayer room, on our knees, wailing before the Blessed Sacrament. We sang, we danced, and we beat the life out of the goat skin drums in some infantile, ironic hope that it would be transferred to him. We literally begged God, with tears in our eyes and bruised knees as the modern replacements for sackcloth and ashes, to save him. He died that day. Quicker than a thought.