About the Michael SHERMER conference, 2009.09.09, at the Faculty of Philosophy

Following a Facebook invite, in the evening of 2009.09.09, I went to the Titu Maiorescu amphithater Faculty of Philosophy (University of Bucharest), to see a conference by Michael SHERMER. See my message for some photos, things I’ve learned, and some personal thoughts.

A. Pictures

First of all, here are some pictures I’ve made at the event:

There are even three YouTube videos at the conference (in English): 1, 2, 3.

B. What did I learn?

Some ideas I jotted down:
a. (a conclusion of another person) When will computers reach human-level intelligence? We’re five years away and always will be;

b. Regarding one of Charles DARWIN‘s trips:
Charles DARWIN noted that Galápagos tortoise that lived on different island had different evolution; One could tell which turtoise came from which island with precision; They evolved differently;

c. According to the Tree of life, all animals come from the same origin;

d. A typical logic for believers:
i. “X” looks designed;
ii. I can’t think of how “X” was designed naturally;
iii. Therefore, “X” was designed supernaturally;
This is known as “God of the gaps”;
Example: People can’t imagine how the pyramids were made; This leads into thinking they have been done by aliens;

e. Quote:

This most beautiful system [The Universe] could only proceed from the dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being.

-Isaac NEWTON;

f. The fate of all mysteries: they get “filled” eventually;

g. Two explanations for life:
i. Supernatural designed (from Top to Bottom);
ii. Natural designed (from Bottom to Up);

h. (funny, I might add) Psychoanalysis is just as effective as doing nothing (this argument also had some scientific proofs);
Talking to a friend or relative is best;

C. Extra readings

If you want to know more about the conference or Michael SHERMER himself, you can see:
(English)
a. Wikipedia entry;
b. Personal homepage;
c. A magazine he founded and runs;
d. Personal thoughts on Twitter;

(Romanian)
a. (Romanian, with English videos) An article on HotNews.ro;
b. (Romanian) An online discussion on HotNews.ro;
c. (Romanian) Conference review;

D. Personal opinion on the conference

Now for my thoughts on this. In a typical society, if my conviction is to be a vegetarian, I could go to a conference on the advantages of eating meat without raising an eyebrow – “Why are you here?”. In the orthodox world, things are more complicated. Do a search on [thou shall not read heretic books] (Romanian) and you’ll get to strong arguments (such as this – Romanian) not to ever read anything that would affect your belief. It’s basically a sin.

Things are that simple – don’t go. But I complicated things, and I went to the conference. To me, sins are:
a. Sins not to be done; Avoid as possible;
b. Sins that are really sins, but I still do them;
c. Sins that are considered by others to be seen, not by me, I do them.
I confess all of them, erase the table.

The conference went into c. Lucky (what a strange word for an Orthodox) for me, in Orthodoxy there are more than the laws, there are interpretations. Sometimes they clearly oppose, and you (or at least me) can:
a. Pick the one that you favor if there are two;
b. If you happen to find out an opinion that you like, stop reading;
c. If you happen to find out an opinion that you don’t like, keep searching until you find an opposite one, then apply a. scenario.
That’s a bit funny to think. In this case, I once read/heard that you can read heretic books if you are more advanced into Orthodoxy/read some things. I can’t apply this logic without getting into the “being proud” problem, but at least I’ve switched sins. Phew, that was though.

Now writing in public about the conference is a bit more complicated. Now I don’t only hear things, I also speak about them. Tricky. Last night, I asked my spiritual father about this, and said I should write it down, but also mention my opinions on the subject (which I didn’t intend to do in the first place).

So, here goes.

A very first observation is this: when there’s a conference on Dalles Conference Room about Orthodoxy, with some monks and priests and orthodox thinkers, I usually can’t see anything. The room (very large, I think there are more than two times more chairs than at the Faculty of Philosophy Titu Maiorescu amphitheater) is crammed with people. There is a balcony. Crammed. There are rooms between the chairs, behind the chairs, between the chairs and speakers’ desk. Crammed. I went two or three times to basically stay outside, could see barely anything, hear almost nothing. That’s how many people go in there. At Michael SHERMER you could get plenty of seats, and while the announcement required prior registration via email, I don’t see that as a too much problem.

Now the question comes – where are all the Orthodox people? There was a public conference from a much known scientist talking about God. The conference was clearly better advertised in the media (at least from my point of view), the speaker was an very good authority on the subject. In this time of year there are not that many public conferences. It was a Wednesday evening, a time similar to the Dalles conferences. So where was everybody? Perhaps they didn’t like the date (9.9.9. is a funny number).

So, now for my views:
a. The science part doesn’t really matter to me; You have proofs the Earth is billion years old? Good for you; You have problems with a, b, c, d, e (whatever) episode in the Bible, you can prove with a big accuracy it didn’t and couldn’t have happened? Great; This has nothing to do with the way in which I believe in God; If tomorrow, one proves to me with high accuracy that a lot of the facts in the Bible aren’t there, it doesn’t matter; It’s all fine; Prove what you want, the Bible to me is an ethical thing, not a miracle of multiplying the five loaves and the two fish to an X number; That’s not about it; It’s not about dinosaurs, Noah’s arch, dividing the Red Sea, or whatever; The dilemma that dinosaurs exists or not has nothing to do with the 10 commandments (oh, and the fact that they were written in stone by God – or not? – is also not a criteria; Prove whatever you wish to, Orthodoxy, to me, it’s not about things, it’s about ethics);

b. What if I cared about the a. things? What then? It’s a quite simple and amusing solution; We start with the assumption that miracles happen even today; Would God do anything to reduce your faith in Him? Probably not; Would the devil do? Well, perhaps; So I can, theoretically, see all the scientific proofs as devil’s work; You found a skeleton? It was planted; That DNA thing? The devil does miracles; And so on; This could be an easy escape hatch; I know, it sounds a bit silly; But as said, it doesn’t matter to me; And we’re on miracle land; Anything could happen;

c. There were some parts at the conference about Orthodoxy in schools; How do I view things? Is religion in school a bad thing? I don’t know; Is religion in school a good thing? I don’t know; Ask me to vote on the subject and I won’t vote; Force me to vote via mandatory voting and I’d vote for science-teaching, rather than religion-teaching (but it’s not the case nowadays – I’m not forced into this); Why my belief?
Things are simple: to me God exists; I’ve “proven” it to me; Let’s say you are near me; What can I say to you about God? I can say to you, if you ask me on the subject, that I believe God exists; And … that’s about it; I can’t tell you to believe in Him, I have no real evidence to convince you; All I know is that to me it exists and, when confronted, I will tell you that; I can’t really transmit why I believe in God to another one; It’s me;
Luckily (yes, that word again!), there is a book on politeness I’ve read while in high school which clearly states that religion, politics and personal health problems are to be considered taboos, and not tackled in public; Phew! I don’t have to talk about religion in public, the best approach is to go around things;
Now to get from here to putting religion in schools; As said, I can’t tell if God exists. Can others? Ok, let them make religion mandatory; Can others tell that God has nothing to do with schooling? Ok, let them take religion out of schools; I prefer not to have an opinion on this – do whatever you please; A system in which religion is mandatory in schools or a system in which religion is forbidden in schools are all fine to me; I will adhere neither to an NGO that wants religion in schools, nor to another one that wants it out of schools; If forced to have an opinion, I would take religion out of schooling system;
On a personal note, it was at this conference that I found out that in the United States there are no national or even federal laws on religion in schools, each school has a parents committee that establish what should the children learn; This is a solution to which Horia-Roman PATAPIEVICI adheres, and if were to chose on the matters, I’d vote for it too; Yes, that’s my vote;

d. To me the conference was spiritually fulfilling; Fun, easy to understand, smart; Did I mention fun? I found out great things.

Oh, and looking backwards, there was really nothing at the conference that affected my belief. It wasn’t a sin at all. Yes.