The Power of the Anthropic Principle

Before moving on to the next subject, I wish to summarize a few points from earlier posts and relate them to newly introduced terms. Like EVERYTHING else, the anthropic principle is also heavily dependent on scale. It created the universe and our planet, but it also created us and is constantly with us in every choice we make. This is what I have previously referred to as the Road Taken or the Personal Legend. Things can only happen once and in one way. You are who you are because your parents combined their genes to create you. That is why you look the way you do. Your ancestors’ genes, going all the way back to primordial life, have led to you. This is still a fairly big scale, but the principle works on even smaller scales. Where you live, what school you go to, who your neighbors are, these conditions are fundamental in determining who your friends will be, who you fall in love with and how you spend your spare time. In return these influences slowly shape you into being the person you are. Concordantly, if you grew up somewhere else entirely, you would speak and think in a different language, associate with completely different people, have different tastes, in effect be a completely different person. Again, this is the anthropic principle at work. Your environment shapes you into being exactly you and no one else. Any change in this environment might change you as well. Even down to everyday choices the principle still works its magic. Which route you take to work, the time you leave, the conversations you engage in, the people you meet randomly, all these events can potentially have monumental importance in your micro-universe, can even be matters of life and death or guide your life decisions. This is because of the anthropic principle aka. the Road Taken. Over the course of your life, these factors continually shape your personality. Something that will only really become apparent with time. But as your life changes so in fact do you. Your job, geographical location, current and past friends and colleagues, as well as the ongoing changes in your family setup as some pass away and others appear, these all continuously change your own personality as well. 

Closely associated to the anthropic principle is the butterfly effect which as an analogy states that even the slightest and seemingly insignificant events can potentially have extreme consequences. In my experience I find this to be true, and I am thus very humbled by the power that chance hold over our lives. So at the same time as I label myself a pantheist in religious terms because I acknowledge the Universal Clockwork as the maker and mover of everything, to create meaning out of this awe I turn to philosophy. This is why in philosophical terms I am a semi-compatibilistic scale determinist. At the core of this label there is a deeper understanding of the power of the anthropic principle and chance which helps release you from the unbearable lightness of being because it releases you from the major responsibilities of existence. Instead of trying to control everything, you just have to seize any opportunity that falls in your lap and make the best of it. Decisions can only be made in the presence based on the information available at that time. The accumulated effect of all these micro-decisions is what determines your route. This is navigating on the Infinite Freeway, but as described earlier, it is a congested and fast moving place, so you never have absolute control of your route, and only slight navigational changes are completely in your control. More importantly, your starting position and vehicle is not up to you at all, hence the semi-compatibilistic approach. For parents wanting to have children, ensuring that these will have the best possible chances of successfully navigating the Freeway, might fall under their micro-universe to a certain degree depending on their own situation, but for the child there is no influence whatsoever and thus that decision falls under their macro-universe as they do not even exist yet. Macro-choices are not up to you so with those you just have to go where the road takes you. 

Acknowledging that scale is everywhere and knowing that only micro-choices are really in your hands sometimes makes you seem like a cold sociopath as I have touched upon before. With that in mind, I wish to cover a very sensitive subject with the risk of seeming very pragmatic or even cynical. Because scale also applies to timelines. This is something I have given a lot of thought lately, since I started dealing with a lot of conservationists through my work. They all have great intentions in saving the rainforest and individual animal species that are threatened as a result of human development. And even though I share their sentiments and admire their work, as well as a profound love of the natural world, when I apply some of my philosophical beliefs, it puts their entire efforts into a wholly different light. 

Hope for the Future

Thankfully, because pantheistic determinism is very tangible without any belief required, I find that I can most times get through to religious people when trying to convey my ideas. They simply cannot argue against it, because it does not require belief, just experience and knowledge. This is a good sign, and it indicates to me that the greatest threat to modern religions is education and travel. It is no coincidence that some of the world’s poorest countries are also some of the more religious. But with the onset of the internet and globalization I think we will very soon have the power to deal religion its ultimate death stroke and freeing the minds of those currently enslaved. 

First step is having a lingua franca, a language that everyone in the entire world speaks. This is crucial in sharing information since so much is lost in translation. Currently, English is the best bet at a lingua franca, which is why I choose to blog in it, let alone study it at a university level. If then you put a smartphone in everyone’s hands, suddenly all the information in the world is at their fingertips, albeit occasionally a little hacker assistance is required. Less progressed countries still ban a lot of websites because God forbid people should actually try to seek out their own information. But if the entire global information society is suddenly at everyone’s fingertips, then me and other transcender bloggers can reach all the people in the world. Everyone can read the books of Stephen Hawking and Michio Kaku and other scientists, and then make up their own mind as what to believe instead of simply believing whatever prevailing religion their culture have indoctrinated them to support because of the lack of other sources of information. Right now, many third world populations are only being taught religion in school both because many books are not available in their language but also because their governments does not wish them to learn anything besides religion. Again, how can anything that requires people to be sheltered from information do any good in this modern age? Why does religion fear knowledge? Because it knows it will mean the end of it. Trying to shield people from information is the last desperate attempts of religious governments to control their subjects. 

But with those two key ingredients; a lingua franca and everyone online, I strongly believe they would fail and religion could be eradicated once and for all. Will it be missed? No, because people will simply know better. They might still practice it for sentimental reasons, like me going to church on Christmas Eve, but it will no longer determine their rational thoughts. Religion will enter the history books in the form of mythology. Jehova, Allah, Shiva, Lucifer, etc., all these fallen idols will take their place alongside Zeus, Odin and Santa Claus and the human race might finally reach its full potential. I have great optimism for the future of our species and by sharing these thoughts I hope to speed up the process of development. I put my trust in the Universe. It has brought us this far, who knows where it can takes us in the future if only we have the courage to fulfil our destiny as a species? Like Charles Dickens, I believe in humanity:

‘I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss, and, in their struggles to be truly free, in their triumphs and defeats, through long years to come, I see the evil of this time and of the previous time of which this is the natural birth, gradually making expiation for itself and wearing out.’

Worship without Faith and the Nature of Pantheism

Here is the thing about science. Besides allowing people to think for themselves, it doesn’t require a shed of belief in anything. It only requires the power of observation and a curiosity for learning. No need to believe in ancient tales of metaphysical forces performing miracles two thousand years ago and then mysteriously disappearing forever. If you want proof that gravity exists, jump up in the air. If you fall down, that’s gravity pulling you down towards the earth. If I want proof of evolution I go look at animals. Best to start with our close relatives if you need convincing. When I lock eyes with an orangutan, I see familiarity. I see kinship. I see evolution. Why do you think so many animals have eyes, nose, ears, mouth and teeth? Because we all evolved from the same original cell. We are all related which is why we all look like each other and have similar instincts. That’s evolution. Whenever you are feeling the light of the sun burning your skin, you are being bombarded with light energy and radiation emanating from a colossal gas giant fusing atoms in its core creating energy that in turn causes plants to create oxygen that you then inhale every time you take a breath, feeding your body and brain with that very same oxygen. It is a chemical process that keeps your body functioning. Not some divine design, it’s all just a result of the ticking of the universal clockwork. Nature is my church, being alive is my worship.

We have evolved on this planet, thus our bodies are perfected to live here. That’s why we (ideally) sleep for eight hours, because the earth takes 24 hours to revolve around itself. Our calendar, our very concept of time is based on exactly these movements. One year is a full revolution around the sun, the biggest object in the solar system and thus what everything spins around. But if we didn’t have Jupiter two planets out, then we would slowly circle into the sun and be devoured. Instead we are being pulled just enough in either direction to have the perfect conditions for life. So when people talk of intelligent design I shake my head. If there was a God that created the entire universe just for our sake, don’t you think he overdid it a little bit? I mean what was the exact need to create an infinite amount of other galaxies and stars if it was all just a plan to create Earth and humans. No, the reason why we’re here is because our planet has the exact right conditions to create life in the form that it has taken on this planet. If any other factor was different then we wouldn’t be here. This is called the anthropic principle. We are only here because out of billions and billions of solar system with billions and billions of planets and moons, our planet has the exact right conditions to sustain life as we know it, and that is why we are here. No design, no divine intervention just pure statistical chance driven forward by the universal clockwork. Of course, in accordance with the humility of science this paradigm might completely change in the future pending new discoveries, but based on what we know right now, it is a perfectly sound theory, unlike the story of a divine creator of which there is NO empirical evidence whatsoever.

As mentioned previously, I am no atheist in the purest definition of the word. Thanks to Dawkins I now know to label myself as a pantheist. So although I don’t believe in any type of deity, I observe the world and all the workings of the universal clockwork as God. These forces are what created and continuously governs everything and one day they will destroy our planet, perhaps sooner than we expect. But they are still forces greater than ourselves and easily fulfill any gap that the absence of God would create. Only, the universal clockwork does not require you to live in any particular manner, it gives you absolute freedom and rather welcomes you into its midst, it wants you to learn more about it and seek to help others do the same. It is continuously encouraging growth and wants you to progress. After all, if we don’t, we will for a fact perish along with our planet. Judgment day IS coming, and instead of just piously waiting for it, we should rather evolve further to a point where it doesn’t necessarily mean the end of our species but rather an impetus to seek even new horizons in other galaxies and/or in other forms.