Cosmic Silence

Fiala on ethics: Cosmic silence raises questions worth pondering

By Andrew Fiala

Fresno Bee, Friday, May. 03, 2013 | 05:57 PM

We have now discovered more than 100 planets orbiting distant stars. Scientists recently found three planets in the habitable zone — at the right distance from their stars to have liquid water. Thousands of other potential planets have been identified.

Astronomers estimate that there are 17 billion Earth-size planets in our galaxy. There are hundreds of billions of galaxies. Given these incredibly huge numbers, it seems likely that life could have evolved somewhere else.

So why have we not yet made contact with intelligent aliens?

This problem has been named the “Fermi paradox,” after the physicist Enrico Fermi. Given the likelihood of extraterrestrial life, and the fact that some stars and planets are older than ours, you would think that intelligent aliens would have left a trace of themselves in the cosmos. But Fermi wondered, “Where is everybody?”

Intelligent life may be incredibly rare. Single-celled organisms might live in an extraterrestrial ocean. But it’s harder to evolve brains big enough to build radios or rockets. Dinosaurs ruled the earth for 100 million years. It took another 65 million years for Homo sapiens to arrive. We’ve only had rockets and radios for a hundred years or so. We are extremely lucky to have made it to this level. But it may not last long.

Mammal species exist for a million years or so. A natural disaster could wipe a species out in a cosmic instant. Industrialization is also a threat. Mammal species are currently going extinct at an increased rate due to the effects of human industrial development.

This points toward a pessimistic answer to Fermi’s question, known as “the Great Filter.” As species develop the potential for interstellar communication, they may imperil themselves by developing self-destructive technologies. This filter may explain the “Great Silence” in the universe: sapient species may not be intelligent enough to avoid the adverse affects of their own development.

The life of intelligent species in the universe may be, as Macbeth lamented, a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Shakespeare reminds us that politics matters. Interstellar exploration requires centralized government, surpluses of resources, and social stability. Efficient social organization would be required to create a “Star Trek” future.

Shakespearean tragedy reminds us that human beings are not all that good at cooperative endeavor. Intelligent alien species may suffer from the same problems that we do: social violence, destabilizing inequality, political profiteering, inefficient bureaucracy and free-wheeling individualism. An alien Shakespeare may describe life on his planet as a tumultuous spectacle of egoistic ambition and hubris.

A more optimistic explanation of the Great Silence is that truly intelligent beings may want to avoid defacing the cosmos. In order to make it past the Great Filter, intelligent species may have overcome the desire to tag the universe with cosmic graffiti.

For an intelligent species to survive, it must find a way to manage its own planetary ecosystem. It would have to develop social and ethical resources that produce stability rather than violence and war. And it may want to avoid attracting the attention of more aggressive interstellar colonialists.

A species that could solve those problems may see no need for space exploration. Advanced aliens may have decided that the social and ecological costs of massive technological development are simply not worth it. Maybe they choose to live simply. Or perhaps they focus on virtual reality devices — the alien Internet — instead of interstellar exploration. They may also decide, like good cosmic campers, that it is better to leave no trace.

The deafening silence of the cosmos is a cautionary tale. Intelligent species may not last long enough to solve the problems that their own sapience creates. Maybe intelligence is inherently unstable, creating disequilibrium in a universe that is basically devoid of intelligence. Maybe the hubris of intelligence creates its own undoing.

It’s a wonder that we Homo sapiens have discovered alien planets. But we may not be wise enough to understand the ominous emptiness of the cosmic silence. Will we last long enough to fill the void with poetry, meaning and wisdom? Or like the dinosaurs, will we strut and fret for an hour on the cosmic stage and then be heard no more?

April 20, 2013

Religious Freedom

Fiala on ethics: Religious freedom ideal is heart of democracy

By Andrew Fiala, Fresno Bee April 20, 2013

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The first 16 words of the First Amendment represent the heart of our democratic system, according to Charles Haynes, a senior scholar from the First Amendment Center in Washington, D.C.

Haynes gave a workshop on civic education and religious liberty at Fresno State on April 13, which happens to be Thomas Jefferson’s birthday. Haynes argued that the First Amendment represents a progressive step in world history. In other parts of the world, people kill each other over religious differences. Here, the worst that happens is that people go to court.

No system of government is perfect. But the First Amendment idea is a useful innovation. Unfortunately, not everyone agrees.

According to a poll by the Huffington Post conducted in early April, one-third of adults favor establishing Christianity as the official state religion in their own state. Thirty-two percent said they would favor a constitutional amendment making Christianity the official religion of the U.S.

In North Carolina this month, state legislators introduced a resolution stating that the Constitution does not prohibit the state of North Carolina from establishing a state religion. These legislators read the First Amendment as a narrow restriction on the federal government, which does not apply to state governments. Apparently they ignore the Fourteenth Amendment and legal precedents that extend basic rights to the states.

Thomas Jefferson may be turning in his grave. When he died, Jefferson wanted to be remembered for three of his most important projects: the Declaration of Independence, the University of Virginia and the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom.

In the Virginia Statute, Jefferson explained that God created human beings with free minds and that He does not use coercion to force us to believe. Jefferson also noted that political and religious leaders are fallible and uninspired men. For those reasons, religious belief should not be enforced, restrained, burdened or molested.

Moreover, Jefferson held “that truth is great and will prevail if left to herself.” He adopted that idea from the philosopher John Locke, who had argued that “the truth certainly would do well enough if she were once left to shift for herself.”

Not everyone is content to leave the truth alone to fend for herself. Some continue to think that religious truth needs to be propped up and defended by political power, by hierarchical institutions and by coercive laws.

Those who think that religious belief needs legal supports may be worried that humanity is easily corrupted. Some may fear that if religious truth were not backed up by state power, irreligion would triumph. Wouldn’t people ignore religion, if the law were indifferent to religion?

But if religious beliefs can only prevail when bolstered by coercive legal institutions, this may show us something lacking in those beliefs. It would be odd to say that we need the state to enforce ideas about gravity or mathematics. Those ideas can indeed defend themselves in a free and open marketplace of ideas.

But what about religious ideas? Jefferson thought that true beliefs would prevail in an open forum. It may be that only weak or false beliefs need to be defended by political compulsion.

The authors of the First Amendment were not directly concerned with setting up a marketplace of ideas. Rather, they wanted to prevent domination by one religion over others. As James Madison wondered, “Who does not see that the same authority, which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other Religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other Sects?”

Those who want to establish a state religion ignore the ugly history of religious violence that ensues when diverse religions vie for political power. The solution is to prevent any religion from obtaining political power.

As a birthday gift to Thomas Jefferson, we might reflect on the importance of the ideal of religious liberty. We might also reflect on the connection between religious freedom and Jefferson’s beloved University of Virginia.

For truth to prevail, people need to be properly educated about the history of religious violence, about political philosophy and about the progressive import of those sixteen monumental words.

April 6, 2013

Is helping the poor a moral obligation?

By Andrew Fiala

Fresno Bee, Friday, Apr. 05, 2013

The President of the World Bank, Jim Yong Kim, recently announced the goal of eliminating extreme poverty by the year 2030. Kim noted that there are 1.3 billion people living in extreme poverty, 870 million who go hungry every day, and 6.9 million children under 5 who die every year as a result. Kim concluded that helping the poor is “a moral imperative.”

Moral imperatives establish duties and obligations. If Kim is right that there is a duty to help the poor, then it is wrong not to help them. If there is a duty to help the poor, we should feel guilty when we are not helping them.

Billions of people live on less than $2.50 per day — what we pay for a café latte or an ice cream treat. Should we feel guilty for indulging in such luxuries while children die of deprivation?

Most of us don’t feel guilty as we spend money on trivial luxuries. Perhaps we’re morally clueless. It is easy to ignore suffering that is hidden in distant places. But the more plausible explanation is that people don’t agree with Kim that helping the poor is a moral imperative.

We think it would be nice to help the impoverished. But charity is not obligatory. We might also think that global poverty is simply not our own fault. If we’ve done nothing wrong, then we should not feel guilty or blameworthy.

Most people would agree that there is a duty to help those whom we’ve wronged or harmed. If I am riding on someone else’s back, I have an obligation to get off his back. If I am somehow contributing to the problems of the poor, then I might be blamed for their plight.

But are middle-class Americans riding on the backs of the global poor?

We do benefit from cheap consumer goods and resources that are produced and extracted by the world’s working poor. Your clothes, for example, were most likely made by poor people working in dangerous conditions. In November, a garment factory burned down in Bangladesh. Clothing was manufactured there for American brands. More than 100 people died in the fire. According to the New York Times, the minimum wage for workers in that factory was about $40 per month — just over $1 per day.

The clothes we wear are manufactured by poor people, who may die as a result of dangerous working conditions. Does that create an obligation on our part? Or is that just the result of free market economics?

Thomas Pogge, an ethics professor from Yale, discussed this question last week in San Francisco at a meeting of the American Philosophical Association. Pogge received a prize for an article where he argues that the international system unjustly violates the human rights of the world’s poor.

Pogge thinks that injustices in the global economic structure create an obligation to the poor. He admits that failing to save people is not as bad as killing them. But Pogge claims that we are not simply failing to save the poor. Instead, he claims, the international system is rigged against them.

From Pogge’s perspective, we are riding on backs of the global poor, actively contributing to their poverty. Affluent nations extract profit and resources from poor countries, while poor countries cannot overcome the headwind created by international systems. We should get off their backs and compensate them for their predicament.

It might be that if we did not purchase products manufactured in foreign sweatshops, we would further impoverish the global poor. It might also be that donations to the poor cause dependency and corruption.

Those practical concerns do not weaken the moral claim that we have an obligation to the poor. We need to be careful and strategic as we readjust global economic priorities. But the President of the World Bank appears to agree with the ethics professor that there is a moral obligation to create a world free of poverty.

As you sip your $3 coffee, you might insist that the global economy is none of your business. But there is a growing consensus that it is our business to be concerned about the affliction of those whose labor fills our cups.

March 23, 2013April 21, 2015

Soul, Heaven, and Butterfly Dream

Easter is a good time to ponder what happens to the soul

By Andrew Fiala

Fresno Bee, Friday, Mar. 22, 2013 | 04:16 PM

What happens when the brain and body die? A popular book, “Proof of Heaven,” by neurosurgeon Eben Alexander offers an answer based upon an out of body experience he had while in a coma. He claims that his experience proves that death is not the end of consciousness.

“Human experience continues beyond the grave,” Alexander writes. “More important, it continues under the gaze of a God who loves and cares about each one of us and about where the universe itself and all the beings within it are ultimately going.”

Skeptics have argued that Alexander has not really offered proof of the sort we expect from science. Are we sure, for example, that Alexander’s comatose brain really was entirely “off-line”? A further interesting question is the cultural presuppositions we see in Alexander’s account of his experience.

Our interpretations of experience, including near-death experiences, are infused with meaning that we acquire from culture. Alexander speaks of heaven and of a loving God. If he were a Buddhist or a Hindu, would he interpret the experience differently?

From the Christian perspective, when the body dies, the soul moves on to another spiritual realm. But in other traditions, when the soul separates from the body, it transmigrates, moving on to another life. How can we know which interpretation of the afterlife is the correct one?

If we left our bodies and brains behind, wouldn’t we also leave behind our experiences, memories, and cultural standpoints, including the language, images and ideas we use to interpret our own experiences? Would we recognize or understand anything without the cultural experience that the brain has worked so hard to accumulate in this life?

The deeper puzzle is the connection between soul and body. If the mind is distinct from the brain, how are mind and body able to interact? This problem has puzzled philosophers for centuries.

The philosopher Descartes proposed the pineal gland as the focal point for the interaction between the body and the soul — an appropriate choice given the location of the pineal gland in the center of the brain. But we know better now: the pineal gland is a part of the endocrine system, not the seat of the soul.

The idea of soul points toward a substantial mystery. The soul is not supposed to be a material thing. It has no size or shape or density. So how does it interact with the matter of the body? And where exactly does it go, when it leaves the body?

To explain where the soul goes, we must postulate another sphere of reality — the spiritual realm. But that spiritual realm would not be extended in space, since it is outside of material reality. The spiritual realm is not a place located in space.

Nor is it clear that the soul is a “thing” in any ordinary sense of that term. Existing things are defined in terms of space. They have location and size and mass. But the soul is not a thing with weight and shape. Nor is it clear where it is located in relation to the body, let alone in the afterlife.

And yet, the religious viewpoint maintains that the soul and the spiritual realm are more real than the material world. Alexander asserts that his experience was “real in a way that makes the life we’re living here and now completely dreamlike by comparison.”

Alexander described one part of his experience as flying on the wings of butterflies. Butterflies have symbolic meaning. It is amazing that the lowly caterpillar is reborn as a beautiful flying insect. One wonders whether Alexander’s butterflies are a metaphor or supposed to be real. Would there really be flying butterflies in the spirit realm outside of space and time?

The butterfly dream is reminiscent of a Taoist story about Chuang-Tzu, a sage who had a dream in which he felt he was a butterfly. When he woke up, Chuang-Tzu wondered if instead of being a man who had dreamt he was a butterfly, was he really a butterfly dreaming that he was a man.

Easter is a good time to ponder those sorts of questions. Can the soul really fly off to another life? Or are we merely caterpillars who dream every spring of becoming butterflies?

March 13, 2013March 13, 2013

In the Beginning, Man Pondered Creation

Fiala on ethics: In the beginning, man pondered creation

Fresno Bee, originally published March 9, 2013; published online March 12, 2013

By Andrew Fiala

The debate about creationism and evolution is clearly not over. Nearly half of the American population believes that God created human beings in their present form about 10,000 years ago.

According to the Gallup Poll, the percentage of Americans who believe this has not changed much in 30 years, going from 44% in 1982 to 46% in 2012.

In Ohio last week, the state Supreme Court heard arguments about a teacher, John Freshwater, who was fired because he taught intelligent design. Freshwater’s attorney argued that intelligent design is “a scientific theory that happens to be consistent with the teachings of multiple major world religions.” Defenders of intelligent design argue that there are signs in nature that an intelligent designer either planned or is guiding natural processes. Defenders of evolution will interpret the data differently. But however we interpret the data, it is not clear that intelligent design really is consistent with the teachings of multiple world religions.

Some creation stories lack an intelligent designer. Babylonian, Greek and Roman myths talk about the gods arising out of primordial chaos, with battles, patricide and violence among the gods. In those traditions, there is a struggle and elemental power but no apparent designing intelligence.

The idea of intelligent design obviously has more in common with Christian theology. Traditional Christian theology points toward an omniscient, omnipotent and loving God who created the universe. But the all-knowing and all-powerful God of theology is different from the God of the Genesis story. The God of Genesis is surprised by human misbehavior and the wily ways of the serpent. It is hard to make sense of an intelligent and loving designer who is so frustrated with his creation that he floods the Earth and kills everyone in order to start over again.

Many liberal readers of the Bible will claim that these stories are not meant to be taken as literally true. Rather, such tales are supposed to impart a moral or spiritual lesson. There is no denying the importance of fables and parables to warn, inspire and exhort. But if they are read as parables and fables, they lose their explanatory power and their value as a competitor with the theory of evolution.

Someone might claim that despite the allegorical nature of many creation stories, these tales point toward an intelligent designer behind the myth. But some religious ideas aim in entirely different direction. Ancient Christian heretics — the Gnostics and Manichaeans — believed that the material world was created by a malicious bungler. That might explain all sorts of problems, like evil, cancer and natural disasters.

Other traditions are not focused on creation. Buddhism emphasizes the repetition of vast eons of time instead of a moment of creation caused by a creator god and a final judgment or endpoint of creation. From this standpoint, time involves eternal or infinite cycles. Within those cycles, consciousness can evolve through a long process toward enlightenment.

How would we decide which religious account is true: that the universe is an eternal cycle, or that this world is a failed creation, or that an intelligent designer created the whole?

While it is interesting to speculate about the origin and purpose of the world, it is important to acknowledge that there is no consensus about these metaphysical ideas. Nor is there a commonly agreed upon method for deciding which account is true.

Critics of evolutionary theory want to “teach the controversy,” as Sen. Rick Santorum used to put it. However, the controversy runs quite deep. While it is doubtful that science teachers could reasonably cover the gamut of creation stories in their classrooms, a course in religious studies might help, along with a course in the philosophy of religion and the philosophy of science. Americans need more information about the history and diversity of religion and about the scientific method.

It might be that almost half of the population accepts a literal account of creation because they have not been exposed to the depth of the controversy about creation and design — even among the world’s religions.

Defenders of intelligent design may not want to open that particular can of worms. But it is fascinating to consider how our ideas about creation have evolved and developed.

http://www.fresnobee.com/2013/03/12/3210031/fiala-on-ethics-in-the-beginning.html#