As I was saying in my last post, before I was rudely interrupted by my Spanish class ;), a person either has faith in God (and thus believes that he exists) or does not. Faith in God either exists in that person or it does not. There is no halfway house.
Concerning the actual existence of God, I pretty much reject the whole idea of God or gods. The notion of God is a concoction of the human mind, and nothing more. Of course I have no proof of this, but you have no proof of the non-existence of furry pink astro-monkeys who control the universe from an upbeat sushi bar in the Shell Dimensions (a set of dimensions that we cannot know exists because they encapsulate the eleven or so dimensions in our universe). I’m being no sillier than you.
It seems to me that a lot of things that used to be explained away as God’s work (i.e. the creation of the universe) can now be explained by science. Slowly science will explain more and more things that could once be explained by speaking in mysterious tones and lots of arm waving. Why is this faith in science any different to faith in God? Science started from nothing and has now explained a great deal. It’s explained things that the earliest practicioners of the various sciences can’t have imagined it would explain. It’s allowed us to build things (and destroy things, sadly). Science may never be able to explain how the universe came into existence (then again, it might), but that’s irrelevant. All it needs to do is explain some of the things which religious texts put down to God, such as where we came from and how the Earth was formed (as opposed to the universe as a whole). There is no reason for me to doubt that science will eventually accomplish this, given time. This is certainly a very different kind of faith than that which many people place in God.
There might be a scenario, involving both Schrodinger and his cat, in which God exists and does not exist at the same time, but we won’t pursue that train of thought here. It would, however, apease the theists and atheists because they would both be correct.
Today was one of the more productive days I’ve had recently, at least in terms of the amount of writing I got done. I make no claim as to the quality of this writing though. It’s most likely all crap, and won’t find its way into a paper or my thesis. But I feel that’s irrelevant at this point in time. I need the writing practice, and I need to get all my thoughts onto paper.
Even though today was a more productive day, I still feel like I’m forcing myself to work. There’s no spark there at the moment. Thankfully this is the first time during my Ph.D when my motivation has waned to these low levels. From what other people are telling me, it happens a bit more often to most people. I don’t want to drag on like this for much longer though. I think I’ll dedicate tomorrow to implementing a sample solution for the second comp4301 assignment. After that’s out of the way, maybe I’ll feel ready to work on Ph.D stuff. I hope so.
At least there were no weird conversations today. Well maybe there was one. I think I got voted weirdest person in the office, mainly for being a vegetarian who actually likes the taste of meat (or used to before giving it up!), from what I could gather. This is just an absolute cop out. Although I actually like being different from everyone else (and hence weird), the other two a stranger than I. I think you guys are weird. I’m calling it a tie between you two whether you like it or not. Strange people. Who’s stupid idea was this contest anyway? Probably the same person that taped a Freddo Frog to our office door, but I wouldn’t put it past the other one either. At least there’ll only be one weird person to put up with in the office tomorrow. The other weirdo works from home on Tuesdays. These guys are the best weirdos around, though. I can’t think of another pair of weirdos on the planet that I’d rather share my office with. Hmm, maybe if I think harder… ;)
Español estoy voyando bien. Pero tengo que recordar más vocabulario. La gramática es fácil. Solamente el vocabulario es defícil de recordar. Yo tengo el mismo problema en inglés.
