Okay, a summary that is so long it has to be broken up into three sections in hopes of making it palatable is obviously leaving too much meat and fat and skin on the bone.
Let’s try a bullet point presentation instead.
- First, a lot of what I have posted was written when I was strictly a materialist and atheist, or at least close enough that I was still interested in parsing out the consequences of the belief that only physical things are real.
- One of those consequences is that the universe is a mechanism ruled by physical laws. All our thoughts and actions are the result of cause and effect–the fact that we experience “choice” at first hand all the time notwithstanding.
- Thus it doesn’t make sense to blame other people for “selfish” and “evil” acts–they are just doing what the organic computer in their head makes them do.
- Still, we are likely to be happier if we follow whatever moral precepts are programmed into our brains because they help us get along with others and feel good about ourselves. [and it’s not like we have a choice, right?]
- Our capacity to fool ourselves generally acts to our benefit by filtering out unimportant details, thoughts that lead nowhere, and choices which are obviously suboptimal. Frankly, I’m glad I don’t have to constantly consider whether I should stab myself in the eye with a pen.
So, what is the point of all this? Well, I’ll tackle that at greater length in my next post, but suffice it to say that, at least for me, it is entertaining to try to look at the world as it “really is” rather than as we are constantly interpreting it to be.
Spoiler alert: you are much less important than you think. Much much less.
Black Hole Radiation 