Both shadowdoubters (a certain type of atheists) and rabid creationists are advised not to read this. I’m not trying to provoke a hateful discussion, just putting a load of linked interesting thoughts from my mind to the screen .

Chatting with a new friend who is no less than a priestess of Ishtar reminded me of something else that is missing from the old half-finished article about communities, selfishness and selflessness, and evolution of information (search for it in the libervis wiki). Love.

Selfless behavior usually doesn’t come from rational decisions, it is something we do because our hearts tell us to.

In fact communities tend to be tied together by multiple forms of friendship, love and spiritual(-like) thoughts.These shouldn’t be omitted from a text about the way communities work!

There is a bit of a problem here, though: when one starts talking about love and other spiritual matters, this will be hard to integrate with the scientific style reasoning on which the other ideas from the article are based.

Spiritual and rational truth both are valid, but they are very different beasts. In science it doesn’t matter that you have a feeling something is correct, you have to have evidence and you have to have tried hard and to falsify your theory. Then you will still not have found an absolute truth, but your theory (provided that it is simpler than equally tested alternatives) will be the best available theory. For spiritual matters, the best you can do is follow your heart.

A simple example of the two types of truth operating on the same domain: If the weather report says there will be rain, you take an umbrella with you, instead of having faith (the) god(s) will keep you dry or will have an intention with your getting wet. On the other hand, if you’re outside without an umbrella and it starts to rain, you may feel a whole lot less miserable if you react by meditating on the feeling rain gives on your skin and the cleansing of the world it symbolizes, instead of wishing you had an umbrella.

A special case is dogma: In science you have to make certain assumptions and then reason in a logical way starting from those. One such assumption is that statistics can be used to make predictions. For example when you flip 100 coins, the prediction is that about 50 of them will be heads. There is absolutely no reason to believe the universe won’t suddenly change and always make all coins fall on the same side. Of course there is no reason to believe something like that will happen either. You could say we can use statistics because they have always been correct, but that is circular reasoning. So, science requires some assumptions that seem sensible: 1 + 1 = 2, statistics can be used for predictions, the speed of light in a vacuum is always the same, etc etc. It is of course important to make the set of assumptions as small as possible, because any extra assumption is an extra potential point that can be proven incorrect.

Religious dogma combined with logic is different. There is no way such dogmas can be compared with reality. Accepting a set of dogmas crafted by a malicious individual and then following a series of logical consequences can lead to becoming a suicide bomber or an exploited sect member. It leads to abuse of selfless behavior, the destruction of the individual and possibly part of the larger community. A good advice is to follow your heart and let your mind protect you, not the other way around.

One interesting “conflict” between religion and science are the origins of the universe, life and humanity. Most religions have creation myths, and science also has theories about the subjects. When one reads creation myths as symbolical instead of factual/historical texts (follow your heart instead of your mind!) there doesn’t appear to be much of a difference at all, though. But why do religious literalists make such a big deal of creation myth vs science, and not of other myths that science disagrees with?

It could be because the creative process is something nearly every member of our species cares about. Humans are builders: houses, airplanes, websites, networks, clothing, etc etc. All those things that make humans different from most other animals is caused by our love for creating things. It’s not surprising we have strong feelings about what created us.

We are far from the only species on earth that builds things. We even aren’t the only animal that builds things that are far larger than our own bodies. Others are ants, bees, naked mole rats… All of them social species of which most individuals are exceptionally selfless. Humans are very democratic, even anarchic in comparison, but we are just as social.

Cooperation between many individuals is needed to build large things. Humans are the only builders on earth that are intelligent enough to cooperate without a need for strong authoritarianism. (That doesn’t mean individual ants don’t make their own decisions, it means they base their decisions on what serves their queen best, unlike humans who make more balanced decisions.)

Logic shouldn’t have a leading role in spiritual matters, but that doesn’t mean we can’t look at science for inspiration just like we may look at (creation) myth for inspiration. Multicellular organisms most likely evolved from colonies (communities!) of singlecellular ones. Individuals aren’t objects, they are processes just like communities are, processes of thought and constant regeneration. Evolution is a method of thought mostly used by communities (evolving species, the scientific method, …). We all are and are part of multiple levels of thinking entity-processes, with one living, thinking, loving universe at the root of the tree.

It would appear being cooperating builders is our natural behavior. Choosing being a cooperating builder as a meaning for life sure feels like a good spiritual decision to me .