So, the semester is over. Four to go, including one over the summer which is nothing more than working full time at the clinical site. So, I try to get ahead by reading ahead, but it still leaves more time to look at the Internet to find out what’s happening in the world.

There is an interesting video which shows a woman talking about ‘stuff’, in which she tries to explain the cycle for our ‘stuff’. It reminded me of the song by what’s her name called Things – at least I think that’s the title.

There are many other things, including a two hour video of Hitchens, Harris, Dawkins and another atheist, in which they have a discussion about the ills of religion, and the personal consequences of their beliefs, or lack thereof. It can be found on Dawkins.net, and they call it The Four Horsemen.

I’ve also been listening to some interesting things. Interesting, but tedious. David Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. It’s hard to follow for some reason, but I’ve resigned myself to the fact that if I want to get anything out of this stuff I will have to endure it more than once. This one I did about three times; about three times, because I had to start it at the beginning a few times. I will have to do it again, but I have left it for now and have started, again, Hobbes’ Leviathan. Hobbes starts off this work with discussing, or trying to explain rather, our basic faculties. For some reason when people write their thoughts concerning man in society with others, they feel they have to start with the basics, how and why human beings are the way they are, which for them leads logically to the conclusions they formulate. As I was listening to Hobbes’ attempt, I wondered why this would be so, why these people would attempt something obviously beyond them. Hobbes goes into detail about language, for instance, and goes into a superficial explanation which includes the tower of babel. To me it is disingenuous to talk about such things, of which they obviously have little knowledge. To me it would make much more sense to admit to the lack of knowledge and just go from there.

A lot of this stems from a need for a reasonable flow with our discourse. Sure, the need is there, but we should be able to rationalize what we observe and try to explain things in terms that include what we know without speculating on things with which we may never understand. There is this need, but also a need to reconcile what we do know with things we think we know, such as religion. It is disconcerting, because what people attempt is a rational exposition based on irrational concepts. They try to reconcile reason with things believed without any proof whatsoever, which of course must lead to insurmountable difficulties.

For instance, I have looked ahead to chapter 31, which he calls Of The Kingdom of God by Nature. Here is the first line:

I have sufficiently proved in what I have already written Ÿthat the raw condition of nature - that is to say, of the absolute liberty that people have who are neither sovereigns nor subjects – is anarchy and the condition of war; Ÿthat the precepts by which men are guided to avoid that condition are the laws of nature; Ÿthat a commonwealth without sovereign power cannot survive, and is a ‘commonwealth’ only in name; Ÿthat subjects owe to sovereigns simple obedience except when that would conflict with the laws of God.

Now, there is not one shred of direct evidence for the existence of a deity. None whatsoever. Yet, here is Hobbes trying to write a lengthy reasonable approach about human society, and his ideas are all based on the improbable concept of an omniscient deity. Can there be any worth to its intended purpose at all? There will always be the historical value, and even worth referencing when exploring religion in general, but as to any value with regard to explaining the society of human beings there can be very little.

My brother asked me once about the beginning of good and evil. The question also has been posed to me by others concerning an inherent morality, or rightness and wrongness to existence. Not just existence as it pertains to human beings, but all existence. At the time I took it as a given, a truth about the universe, that right and wrong were inseparable features of all of existence. I believe this to be a mistake. There is right and wrong in our world, but it pertains only to us as human beings. One could argue that these concepts would extend to any life in our world, or the universe as a whole, but this notion is based on too many assumptions, not the least of which is the fact that we really don’t know that life on another world would be similar to us, or rather that we would recognize it at all. The fact is, our notions of morality and right or wrong, are anthropomorphic. There is no reason to suspect that we see these concepts from any other viewpoint than our own self-centered one. Throughout history these ideas that human beings are the center of the universe have been knocked away. Mankind has always believed existence revolved around our escapades; from an Earth-centered universe, to our place at the top of the food chain. These ideas were established to console ourselves with our imminent and inescapable mortality, but this is one truth about the universe, one truth concerning us anyway, that living things are finite, to the best of our knowledge.