Monday, June 2, 2014

The Main Reasons I'm an Atheist: 3. EVERYTHING has a physical explanation

There are numerous reasons to why I'm an atheist.
In this final blog post in the series I'll be listing the last (and most crucial) one.

For the first post, please click here:

http://bigheadatheist.blogspot.co.il/2014/05/the-main-reasons-im-atheist-1-world-is.html

For the second post, please click here:

http://bigheadatheist.blogspot.co.il/2014/05/the-main-reasons-im-atheist-2-religions.html


3. EVERYTHING has a physical explanation (a.k.a. Why I'm a Materialist)

Even as a non-religious person, I often asked myself whether it's possible that supernatural phenomenons actually exist or not. The concept of the supernatural has a rather nice appeal to it.
It offers a new dimension to look at things. It suggests new and exciting worlds beyond the physical world we take for granted. The possibilities are literally endless.

For a long while, even until recently, there were many aspects of life that I could not find a physical explanation for them. Some things that as far as I knew just didn't seem to sit right with physics, astronomy, biology, chemistry and whatnot.


I'm going to list some common phenomenons that many people do not know how they become possible, or how they work, or how they could possibly comply with the physical world that we know (that also includes me until a few years ago):

  1. Smell
  2. Sound
  3. Sight
All of the things in the list above are something that you can only define subjectively. I mean, how can you explain sight to a blind person? How can you explain sound to a deaf person? How can you explain smell to a person who can't smell? Explaining them objectively is difficult (if not impossible). They are the result of our mind interpreting something subjectively. But are these things something that even exists outside our subjective experience?

Also, what about the next list?

  1. Electricity
  2. Magnetism
  3. Gravity
  4. Color & Light
Those are some seemingly mysterious phenomenons, aren't they? How can you explain them? I mean, just thinking about it makes your head hurt.

And finally, what do you think about the next list?:
  1. Memories
  2. Consciousness
  3. Soul
  4. Time
Wow.. Now that's some profound stuff there, isn't it? I mean, how can you explain these things? Do these things even exist? Or are they an illusion that we stamped a name upon? Big questions there indeed.

I pondered about these things quite a lot myself. And I wasn't ready to completely abandon the possibility of the supernatural until I could find a physical and provable explanation for these mysterious phenomenons.


Eventually though... I did.

One by one, I learned about the physical explanations for each and every one of the listed phenomenons.
Some of them caused me to facepalm myself and say "How could I be so stupid not to realize it myself??"
Others damn near blew my mind away and/or shocked the bejeezus out of me.
Piece by piece, the supernatural world shattered away, and revealed a physical world that was not only even more wondrous than my imagination, but it was amazingly real.

Now, it's good that we have something as useful as the internet. Information is amazingly accessible. I grew up in a generation that did not always have this kind of luxury.

But now that we do, why not put it to good use?
  1. The Sense of Smell (molecular receptors in our noses)
  2. How Sound Works (pushing air in various wavelengths of vibrations)
  3. How The Human Eye Works (light receptors in your eye)
  4. What is Electricity (electrons moving in one direction)
  5. What is Magnetism (the lining-up of electron movements in adjacent atoms)
  6. What is Gravity & Mass (large concetrations of matter attract each other - possibly related to magnetism but could be a separate force in itself)
  7. What is Light & Color (photons created in nuclear fusion - i.e. the sun - "filtered through" physical atoms which absorb some of the photons in certain wavelengths - as energy - and reflect the rest)
  8. What is Time (a subjective experience of the effects of space, matter, movement, and the speed of light & sound)
  9. How Human Memory Works (by combining the functions of many brain sections)
Soul and Consciousness are more complex questions. There are various theories but neuroscientists are still working on this. It's a work in progress.
All evidence so far, however, points that whatever soul and consciousness are, they're created in and managed by the brain. Evidently by multiple regions of the brain simultaneously.
The following link provides some interesting information: Human Consciousness.
And the following link leads to an interesting new find in neuroscience: 
Scientists accidentally discover human 'off switch'.

My personal theory is that consciousness is the culminating result of the aggregation of multiple cognitive abilities (such as the 5 senses, memory, pattern recognition etc.).
A nice analogy is the flocking emergent behavior in animals (as small as bacteria, and as big as fish and birds). On its own, each subject has a certain behavior. But when in a large group, its behavior changes to suit the collective behavior of the flock, thus a new behavior is emerged.
In other words: Consciousness is an emergent behavior from the 'flocking' of multiple cognitive abilities.

As for "souls"... Well, it was never really proven to exist anyway. There's absolutely no physical evidence to support it (and how could it? after all, it's non-physical by definition).
Recently I've heard about some 20-year-old hypothesis involving quantum science (called "Orchestrated Objective Reduction"). But it has been criticized heavily on every turn, so until it gains significant support and evidence, I wouldn't count too much on it.
On the other hand, check out the Split Brain Experiments if you want to see some evidence that refutes the whole spirit/soul/mind-body duality thing (warning: mindfuck alert!).

All in all, I guess the "soul" idea a nice notion that can comfort some people when dealing with death.
But my personal theory is that the concept of souls is nothing but wishful thinking and some imagination.
People die. Deal with it. In the very least, let this notion encourage you to make the most out of the life you know you have, and make it as best as possible for yourself and other people.

So, in conclusion:
As experience taught me, many things that were considered mystical and/or supernatural, eventually always were discovered to have a physical and natural explanation.
As for the phenomenons for which no concrete physical evidence was found yet...
Let's just say I have faith trust in science that eventually such evidence will be found :)