I want to make this very clear: Kent Syverson is one of the most unique and important people it has ever been my blessing to meet. His involvement in the campus magazine that I wrote for singlehandedly and literally saved us from death. He knows how, and since no one anywhere ever will or should ever be able to read any of this, I feel comfortable venting my spleen on a particular quirk of his personality. That’s what this blogsite has only ever been about: I can say literally anything I want, I receive the catharsis with no real consequences. It’s the equivalent of screaming out the window of a rocketship stuck in the bottom of a black hole.
I interviewed him for a class assignment which required me to ask a professional scientist about their day-to-day professional science business. Obviously, he was the picture of politeness and a perfect subject, even when I missed the first appointment, because I am an asshole. We’ve made it clear that I would trust him before myself in nearly ever endeavor you could possibly ask for a partner on, correct? Okay. Secure in this knowledge, try to continue and pay attention to the actual religious and philosophical point I’m going to make in this work. Honestly, if I were a better writer, I probably could’ve pulled this of without naming names, but function and pragmatism has always (and hopefully will always) play second fiddle to teeth-grinding eye-gouging hair-pulling honesty by any means necessary, fuck any and all consequences anywhere ever.
Faith is a one word definition (MY one word definition, specifically) for “A thing that should never have to be confirmed by anyone else”. If a Professor is a Geology teacher and a Christian, only one of those things require faith. Faith is also the definition of utter lunacy—when a person is also the only one who doesn’t think they themselves are insane. When you’re the only member in your own support group. Kent says there was a time in his life, in college, when he realized he was ultimately helpless and made a genuine commitment to Christianity. It’s an admittance of weakness—which I’m fine with, since it’s one of the first steps to inner strength—but he joined a christ-club in lieu of lifting weights, metaphorically speaking.
If science is as exactly brutal and unempathetic as he constantly reminded me that it is, he also had a time when his spiritual guts weren’t up for the strong fight of admitting something that would’ve led to great emotional catastrophe. So while most of the time, he is science-man, sharing the good word of geology, hypothesis, theory, testing and “letting ideas be mauled in the wild to see if they survive”, he has his own cowardice. He was there for it, I didn’t need to ask about it. But I hated the fact that he wasn’t willing to point the science knife at himself. Or, if he did, that he was still comfortable in holding back because it was him on the table this time. In those situations, every doubt is a bullet to the head. I know. I’ve done it. When you’re doing someone else’s theory, you get the nice little endorphins from superiority over another creature’s ideas. Looking at your own guts is what the professional, brilliant, misanthropic, unsocial, outcast truth-seekers do.
Most of the vitriol I keep in my special Kent spleen is from whenever he said agnosticism instead of atheism is the correct religious opinion for any scientist to hold. Personally, I think the correct response is to not give a shit and tell people to stop wasting their time on abstract psycho-masturbating and get to work on functional science work. Kent’s right: You can’t prove for or against god. Good job. But that also means it’s the equivalent of wondering if unicorn piss cures AIDS. How badly would it blow people’s minds if there was a scientist who never gave an ounce of thought to any theological discussion anywhere ever? Besides “I believe there is no god”, “I believe there is a god”, and “I’m not sure”, how about “I don’t give a shit”? If you say that is agnosticism, I submit that you fuck off. To hold with the unicorn metaphor: One group says there are unicorns, one group says there aren’t, one group says they aren’t sure (that’s the agnostics, for those keeping track), or there’s this new group that actually works on Geology in their spare time. I know who I’d be more impressed with. “Oh wow, someone who doesn’t waste any mental power on open-ended social Rorschach tests that give a haven of protection to philosophical cowards on their best days and actively engender stupidity, laziness, and exclusivity the rest of the time? I know who’s getting my grant.”
Ironically enough, I think faith is the juice that drives us to our greatest successes. In all the history of the human race, more maniacs and unsupported whackos did more for equality, scientific development, and just plain eliminating boredom internationally than any group of people who all fit in together and got along swimmingly with all forms of law enforcement and quality assurance testers. And this is why I hate religion so much: it’s like taking the rocket fuel your body creates naturally and powering a riding lawnmower with it. Yeah, it’ll keep the reservoir down just enough to keep you from exploding (usually, and barely) but you’re certainly not going to have any fun with it. And for someone who believes the window of fun to be so narrow to begin with (7 decades, at the best), and that’s the only window of fun you will ever get for eternity, you can see how I started out with pity one day for all my fellow human and eventually moved on up to hatred for the things keeping them back.
After believing we’re imperfect for so many years, why don’t we try believing we’re perfect? Not immaculate, as in dirt-less. But perfect as in a special confluence of forces, randomness, and chance, bad experiences, hard lessons, really fucking uncomfortable senses of humor and thinking shit that would probably get you sent to the stake a few hundred years ago…a perfect little meat tube to fill a perfect little gap that the world had before you came along. If you belittle yourself, you’re not doing anyone any favors, and any leader or deity who wants you to belittle yourself for their account sure as fuck isn’t your friend. We’re the greatest life forms in the history of the universe. We need to grow up and start acting like it. Like real children, for christ’s sakes.
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