Recommend Reading

[dcseain]

Mercury4D, blogging on OKCupid!, wrote a most lovely piece about atheism, reason, and spirituality. I think many of you will enjoy it. A brief excerpt:

... Scientific instruments have brought us the worlds of the very large and distant, as well as the worlds of the very small. It also measures light outside of our visible range, and states of energy that can be perceived only through refined instrumentation. It seems rather presumptuous to conclude that that is the end of inquiry, and research institutes are continually pushing back the boundaries of perception and understanding.

I believe that our senses themselves, coupled with our evolved capability for inquiry and analysis provide other means of knowing which are far from fully understood. This is where I see the realm of honest spirituality and philosophy.

The metaphor that I use to represent this capacity to observe and learn is what I call the “pinart metaphor.” If you go to most toy stores you can find a pinart box. For any that haven’t seen them, they consist of an array of metal pins held in place by a sheet of plastic. When the box is pressed against an object, its image is pushed out on the other side.

In my metaphor, each of the pins in the pinart box is a question that we ask, a test we conduct or some other form of inquiry or observation. When that pin is pushed against reality, it either encounters an object and is pushed back, or it doesn’t. When enough related questions are asked, a pattern emerges that tells us something about what exists on the other side of the box. ...