Recently, Slashdot posted an "Ask Slashdot" interview with Larry Wall (author of the Perl language). The entire interview is great and can be found here. From the interesting conversation in the "Sex and Politics" thread, I thought one of the questions might be food for thought. Just to clear things up ahead of time, I'm inclined to agree with him, but I'm sure others among you will strongly disagree. Anyhoo, without further ado:

7) Role of Religion?
by Anonymous Cowdog

I remember reading at some point that you are a Christian, and there have been suggestions that some of your early missionary impulses (a desire to do good, help others) are perhaps part of the zeal you have put into Perl over the years.

Preferring a scientific view, I am not religious, and have no desire to be. Perhaps there is a God, but if there is, I think he/she has no opposable thumbs; in other words, has no power to change anything; reality is just playing out according to the laws of physics (whatever those are).

Please tell us how in the world a scientific or at least technical mind can believe in God, and what role religion has played in your work on Perl.

A:

Well, hmm, that's a topic for an entire essay, or a book, or a life. But I'll try to keep it short.

When you say "how in the world", I take it to mean that you find it more or less inconceivable that someone with a scientific mind (or at least technical mind, hah!) could chooose to believe in God. I'd like to at least get you to the point where you find it conceivable. I expect a good deal of the problem is that you are busy disbelieving a different God than the one I am busy believing in. In theological discussions more than any other kind, it's easy to talk at right angles and never even realize it.

So let me try to clarify what I mean, and reduce it to as few information bits as possible. A lot of people have a vested interest in making this a lot tougher to swallow than it needs to be, but it's supposed to be simple enough that a child can understand it. It doesn't take great energetic gobs of faith on your part--after all, Jesus said you only have to have faith the size of a mustard seed. So just how big is that, in information theory terms? I think it's just two bits big. Please allow me to qoute a couple "bits" from Hebrews, slightly paraphrased:


You can't please God the way Enoch did without some faith, because those who come to God must (minimally) believe that:
A) God exists, and
B) God is good to people who really look for him.
That's it. The "good news" is so simple that a child can understand it, and so deep that a philosopher can't.

Now, it appears that you're willing to admit the possibility of bit A being a 1, so you're almost halfway there. Or maybe you're a quarter way there on average, if it's a qubit that's still flopping around like Shoedinger's Cat. You're the observer there, not me--unless of course you're dead. :-)

A lot of folks get hung up at point B for various reasons, some logical and some moral, but mostly because of Shroedinger again. People are almost afraid to observe the B qubit because they don't want the wave function to collapse either to a 0 or a 1, since both choices are deemed unpalatable. A lot of people who claim to be agnostics don't take the position so much because they don't know, but because they don't want to know, sometimes desperately so.

Because if it turns out to be a 0, then we really are the slaves of our selfish genes, and there's no basis for morality other than various forms of tribalism.

And because if it turns out to be a 1, then you have swallow a whole bunch of flim-flam that goes with it. Or do you?

Let me admit to you that I came at this from the opposite direction. I grew up in a religious culture, and I had to learn to "unswallow" an awful lot of stuff in order to strip my faith down to these two bits.

I tried to strip it down further, but I couldn't, because God told me: "That's far enough. I already flipped your faith bits to 1, because I'm a better Observer than you are. You are Shroedinger's cat in reverse--you were dead spiritually, but I've already examined the qubits for you, and I think they're both 1. Who are you to disagree with me?"

So, who am I to disagree with God? :-) If he really is the Author of the universe, he's allowed to observe the qubits, and he's probably even allowed to cheat occasionally and force a few bit flips to make it a better story. That's how Authors work. Whether or not they have thumbs...

Once you see the universe from that point of view, many arguments fade into unimportance, such as Hawking's argument that the universe fuzzed into existence at the beginning, and therefore there was no creator. But it's also true that the Lord of the Rings fuzzed into existence, and that doesn't mean it doesn't have a creator. It just means that the creator doesn't create on the same schedule as the creature's.

If God is creating the universe sideways like an Author, then the proper place to look for the effects of that is not at the fuzzy edges, but at the heart of the story. And I am personally convinced that Jesus stands at the heart of the story. The evidence is there if you care to look, and if you don't get distracted by the claims of various people who have various agendas to lead you in every possible direction, and if you don't fall into the trap of looking for a formula rather than looking for God as a person. All human institutions are fallible, and will create a formula for you to determine whether you belong to the tribe or not. Very often these formulas are called doctrines and traditions and such, and there is some value in them, as there is some value in any human culture. But they all kind of miss the point.

"Systematic theology" is an oxymoron. God is not a system. Christians are fond of asking: "What would Jesus do in this situation?" Unfortunately, they very rarely come up with the correct answer, which is: "Something unexpected!" If the Creator really did write himself into his own story, that's what we ought to expect to see. Creative solutions.

And this creativity is intended to be transitive. We are expected to be creative. And we're expected to help others be creative.

And that leads us back (finally) to the last part of your question, how all this relates to Perl.

Perl is obviously my attempt to help other people be creative. In my little way, I'm sneakily helping people understand a bit more about the sort of people God likes.

Going further, we have the notion that a narrative should be defined by its heart and not by its borders. That ties in with my linguistic notions that things ought to be defined by prototype rather than by formula. It ties in to my refusal to define who is or is not a "good" Perl programmer, or who exactly is or isn't a member of the "Perl community". These things are all defined by their centers, not by their peripheries.

The philosophy of TMTOWTDI ("There's more than one way to do it.") is a direct result of observing that the Author of the universe is humble, and chooses to exercise control in subtle rather than in heavy-handed ways. The universe doesn't come with enforced style guidelines. Creative people will develop style on their own. Those are the sort of people that will make heaven a nice place.

And finally, there is the underlying conviction that, if you define both science and religion from their true centers, they cannot be in confict. So despite all the "religiosity" of Perl culture, we also believe in the benefits of computer science. I didn't put lexicals and closures into Perl 5 just because I thought people would start jumping up and down and shouting "Hallelujah!" (Which happens, but that's not why I did it.)

And now let's all sing hymn #42...

My problem with all theological arguments is that the believers often fall back on this as an axiom, as he does:

Because if it turns out to be a 0, then we really are the slaves of our selfish genes, and there's no basis for morality other than various forms of tribalism.

And that's the problem with many theistic arguments. Far too many theists assume that atheists are immoral, and base much of their argument on that.

I have found in my travels that atheists can be just as moral/immoral as theists. And that there has been so much historically-documented immoral behavior committed specifically in the name of a given theism that you can't assume that any theism can be responsible for maintaining morality.

So if morality is dropped out of the argument list, we're back to bit "A" of his equation as the only question. And frankly, if bit "B" is meaningless, bit "A" becomes a no-op which doesn't affect the running of the individual program processes. I suppose that's circular reasoning, but it's no more circular than any of the arguments on the other side of the fence.

The problem is that religion (at least Christian religion) is all about faith. That means believing in something that is unprovable. There is simply no way to get there from the outside. No matter how hard someone wants to explain it or have it explained to them, you can't do it. Even with all of that logic he has built up around it, it comes down to one unprovable point.

And they would argue that it's not about proof. I liked how they handled that in the movie Contact. "Did you love your father?" "Of course." "Prove it."

Then again, they totally copped out on the ending of that movie. I still loved the movie, though.

In reply to:

---

Preferring a scientific view, I am not religious, and have no desire to be.

---

That is my favorite quote that anybody who professes that there is no God uses. One thing that I've noticed is that the more scientific you tend to be in either hobby or profession, the more you tend to lean toward there being a Supreme Being.

One of my physics teachers in school was a member (leader) of at least one (I think two, but I don't remember for sure) Nobel Prize winning team for their work in Quantum Physics/Mechanics (discovering neutrinos or something). He said that the more you learn, the more you realize you don't know, and as you explore the creation of life and the universe, it becomes almost impossible to believe that there wasn't some form of external 'help' in creating it.

And I've seen statistics which say the opposite. Then again, 90 percent of statistics are made up, so that means nothing.

actually i think its more along the lines of 83%. but i have nothing to back that up with other than some dumb article at attrition.org and who knows where they stand to be able to say so.

And 95% of all statistics are caused by smoking

It's not about proof. At the same time, there are people that like to approach it as if it were provable.

I'm either an agnostic or an atheist (I know the difference, I just haven't decided which I am -- perhaps both), so I have no personal stake in this, but if it were provable, then it would no longer be religion, IMO, just worship.

And I can worship Pete Townshend as it is.

I don't collapse from shock when I meet a scientific person who is religious. While it can be argued from some angles that they are mutually exclusive, in day-to-day life I think that there are plenty examples of where they coexist.

I think Tony did a good job of pointing out the circulararity of Larry Wall's response, but one thing I'd say is that Larry Wall has probably given more to his fellow humans in the way of perl than Jim Hogan ever will in the way of anything, so I'd say that the supernatural beliefs he describes seem to be working for him and they're not bothering me (I haven't heard of him proclaiming any fatwahs or anything!).

As for the more scientific you tend to be in either hobby or profession, the more you tend to lean toward there being a Supreme Being. , I would not agree. Just to make it easy, I'd allow that a majority, say 80 percent of folks, believe in a supreme being of some sort. I have no solid basis for that number, but I'd even allow that perhaps a majority of scientists hold that belief. What I am very skeptical of, and which I think has been shown not to be the case through some survey research, is that being more scientific *increases* your chances of belonging to that 80 majority.

One distinction, probably better left to the alt.atheism FAQ (but I'll still make it) is that many folks such as myself don't think of ourselves as people who "profess that there is no God". I don't profess this. It is a losing proposition. Other folks then say "Prove It!". But there are a lot of things that I don't spend time professing don't exist, but which I don't tend to believe in due to lack of what I consider decent evidence. A few years ago a coworker quite seriously confided that there is a second, not-readily-visible moon circling the Earth (I looked it up. I guess, unbeknownst to me at the time, that this is what the term "Lilith" refers to.) Would it be useful for me to spend my time professing that Lilith doesn't exist? Probably not. Maybe I just have a crummy telescope!

Anyhow, I guess, I'll agree with your physics teacher that the more I learn, the more I realize I don't know. Boy, oh, boy, now that I am slowly sliding into "incapable of learning" status, does that mean I will stop realizing how dumb I am??

I'm either an agnostic or an atheist (I know the difference, I just haven't decided which I am -- perhaps both)

I think by definition, you are agnostic if you haven't decided yet. Not that either label is meaningful or can accurately describe a person's view of the universe.

but if it were provable, then it would no longer be religion, IMO, just worship.

"Oh, I hadn't thought of that," says God, and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic. I do so love it when Douglas Adams pokes and prods at religion. Incidentally, that link includes Doug's clarification on the Atheist/Agnostic point.

And I can worship Pete Townshend as it is.

Amen, brother.

Thanks for the link Tony, that was a fascinating read.

>In England there is no big deal about being an Atheist. There’s just a slight twinge of discomfort about people strongly expressing a particular point of view when maybe a detached wishy-washiness might be felt to be more appropriate - hence a preference for Agnosticism over Atheism.

> We just don’t have that kind of fundamentalism in England.

I swear I am moving to Britain, they seem to be a little smarter and more tolerant over there, whereas here in America Atheism is pretty much socially unacceptable.

I don't think Larry Wall said atheists are amoral. Only that there are two places where human morality can well from, religion and hence by influence, culture -- or from the selfish gene. He does not state that one or the other is amoral, but rather, he would rather not be slaved to the selfish gene. I think the selfish gene concept comes from Dawkins, in any case, having a morality based out of religion is more "human." The only flaw in my argument is that I haven't decided whether culture originates from the selfish gene entirely, in which case, you could just as easily say that religion itself is encoded in the selfish gene.

Calvin

But by your definition, an agnostic must be in a state of pre-decision. Some, perhaps most, agnostics do not plan on ever deciding.

Calvin

I think The Selfish Gene is a hypothetical construct. In my experience, morality is natural even without religion, and with or without selfishness.

How is the selfish gene a hypothetical construct? It's no more theoretical than the statement that every single one of Tony Fabris' ancestors lived long enough to reproduce, every single last one of them all the way back to the beginning of time. Every single one of them managed to survive against all odds, one after the other.

The concept of the selfish gene is that it deploys whatever mechanisms/techniques necessary to ensure the survival of itself, creating such things as society and culture.
The expressed characteristics that allow for its survival and reproduction (morality, ethics, culture, society, as well as lower order characteristics like male/female differences, physical characteristics..) well out of the code. Religionists would rather believe that if genes do exist, they are no more than physical blueprints, and that the hand of God, or at least some higher being(s) have some play in the guidance of all of the above, and genetics is no more than physical blueprints if you will. (To some extent the nature vs. nurture argument is related).

So the question is not whether morality is natural or unnatural... Is morality the result of a complex mixture of genetics and society and culture, where society and culture also result from genetics ultimately? Or is morality not part of the selfish gene at all? If so, then morality and ethics may not be about selfishness of survival (survival of the individual, the family, culture and society) but rather originates from some higher unselfish place (let's call that religion). You might say then religion influences, or perhaps engenders society and culture and carries the blueprint (genetics) as part of this plan. In either case, it can be argued as natural.

Calvin

I always understood the Earth-Moon system to be more similar to a double planet binary configuration gravitationaly than a Planet-Moon system (e.g. Mars, Jupiter, etc). The moon does not revolve around the earth, but rather, they both revolve around a central point. It happens that this central point under the surface of the earth due to the larger mass of the earth. Is this ever moving "center point" mystical in any way? Not really. If the lunar orbit is eliptical, then this "black moon" as they call it would be a blank vacuum, no more special than say a lagrange point.

What's the big deal?

Calvin

What I meant is that "The Selfish Gene" can't possibly refer to a single gene. It's shorthand for referring to a complex set of genetic traits. And I would agree that genetics plays a major role in the morality of the human species and individual humans specifically. I'm just saying that morality comes naturally to us, and that it's not necessarily more natural to base morality on religion. Or selfishness.

At the same time, there is a school of thought which states that our human need for religion is also due to a set of genetic traits.

If the lunar orbit is eliptical, then this "black moon" as they call it would be a blank vacuum, no more special than say a lagrange point. What's the big deal?

I think the big deal happens when people start saying there's actually an object there. That we can't see. Riiiiight...

Ah. The term "selfish gene" is not meant to reference an actual physical gene, it's only a description of the human dna being selfish as a whole. It's a basic belief of any darwinist.

If morality comes naturally to us, the question is why? Is it because of some directed action from God, or is it because of directed action of selfish genetics? (e.g. morality ensures the survival of the community, and the community ensures the survival of the individuals, and thus as a long term protective strategy, it is a direct expression of the selfish gene). If however, the selfish gene is non-existent, and the genetic code is merely a physical blueprint, then the hand of God must be involved to propagate the species via the creation of things such as culture, society, morality, etc. To that effect, what you call natural morality is nothing more than the memes of morality from a religious society at large infecting the so-called non-religious. Spooky...

So besides Richard Dawkins, have you read Snowcrash?

Another school of thought simply states that God is just as likely to be directing the action from below as he is from above, as he is the God of all small things as well; things as small as DNA say.

Calvin

And any argument trying to say "our evolution is being subtly directed and manipulated by a supreme being" is self-defeating. On both sides of the argument.

Because if an omnipotent being can do something as huge as alter the course of evolution through his will, then there's no point in either (a) trying to find proof of God because he could insert or hide any proof or disproof he wanted, or (b) trying to view any natural processes from a scientific viewpoint because anything we discover could be changed by God.

This treads dangerously close to the idea of "oh, God created the earth 6,000 years ago with all those fossils already in the ground just to fool us"...

I think the big deal happens when people start saying there's actually an object there. That we can't see. Riiiiight...

It's funny you should mention that...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2251386.stm

Whoa, cool. I didn't know about Cruithne. The movie file here is really cool. Of course, that one we can see.

This treads dangerously close to the idea of "oh, God created the earth 6,000 years ago with all those fossils already in the ground just to fool us"...

I'm sure noone wants to get into the origins debate, but just a note to set the record straight:

Most biblical creationists believe that creation occured between 10,000 and 6,000 years ago and that the fossils came later during the Genesis flood. I'm not sure who you heard the "fossils already in the ground" thing from, but it's definitely not a representative viewpoint of most biblical creationists.

I'm not sure who you heard the "fossils already in the ground" thing from, but it's definitely not a representative viewpoint of most biblical creationists.

Right, I know that (and of course there's no point in me hashing over the flood arguments already presented at www.talkorigins.org ), but I was trying to make a different point.

Let me be more clear about the point I was trying to make...

Option 1: You can look at the universe from a purely scientific perspective, which is to try to discover the natural processes which formed the universe and the life around us, and to view these processes as the only important things worth knowing. These processes come from the basic laws of physics which are absolute. These laws don't change, although our understanding of these laws will change as we learn more and more about them.

Option 2: You can look at the universe from a purely theological perspective, which is to say that it was created by a supreme being, with everything created "in place" as we currently see it. He sends messengers in human form down to our planet every 500 years or so to make sure we're being good.

Option 3: You can take the half way point between 1 and 2, and say that a supreme being is subtly hiding his influence behind natural processes. The processes that we're observing aren't absolute, the will of a supreme being can bend these laws to suit his purposes similar to the way that Morpheus taught Neo to bend the laws of the Matrix.

Option 4: You can take the view that the natural laws that we observe in the universe, and the beginning of the universe itself, was created by a supreme being, but that he's just let everything roll from that beginning moment and is not altering the way things are going in realtime.

Although the creation-science people will deny it by trying to present flawed evidence, they're taking option 3. As are those who say that our evolution is being subtly "directed" by a supreme being. Both camps are saying the same thing, they're just saying it to different degrees. One camp is dead-set on finding tattered shreds of pseudo-scientific evidence proving the earth really was ...poof... created 6000 years ago and that the dinosaur fossils really are that young. The other camp is being a little looser about it and deferring to modern science with regard to the actual details of the age of our universe and its laws. But they're still hanging on to the idea that it's being "manipulated" and "observed" from outside and therefore prayer and worship are still important.

As far as I'm concerned, that's the same thing. Because from everything I've observed about how the world around me works, remotely-directing the evolution of a species without physically interacting with it would be just as much of an amazing feat as creating an entire planet in six days while fooling its inhabitants into thinking it's billions of years old. Both things would require an actual omnipotent God who was able to (for example) make things appear and disappear at will. And aside from illusionist's tricks and unconfirmed legends, we've not yet seen that kind of stuff happening. At least not in a way that gives us real evidence that it's there.

Arguing that an omnipotent God can hide his methods is, as far as I'm concerned, copping out of the argument. Because once you step over that line into "it's that way because God made it that way", you've just turned all points in the debate moot. Suddenly there is no way to prove or disprove anything. God can make evidence go poof if he wants. So there's nothing to argue about, no proof is good enough or bad enough to fight over. All you have left is (say it with me now)... faith.

Now, as far as option 4 is concerned... It's a no-op. If God isn't interacting with the universe and directing things in realtime, what's the point in worrying about him or giving him any thought? You can try to discover all the natural processes as in Option 1, but you're never going to find God that way because by definition, he's bigger and more powerful than the processes which govern our universe. And that concept becomes reducto ad absurdum anyhow, because you then have to ask yourself who created the creator.

Of course, to paraphrase Neil Peart, you can choose not to decide. But then you've still made a choice...

I admit it. I'm lazy. Too lazy to find the page that was linked from.

I assume that the thing with the spirograph-like orbit is Cruithne. I assume that the thing in the middle is the Earth and that the thing to the bottom is the moon.

What is the thing orbiting the moon, and what are the dots-in-a-circle that pass through the moon in an orbit around the Earth?

Or am I misinterpreting the whole thing?

I admit it. I'm lazy. Too lazy to find the page that was linked from.

It's here. According to that page, it's basically another moon. A very tiny one with an odd orbit. Technically, it's a near-earth asteroid. Nothing mysterious about it other than the cool orbit.

It can't be lilith, because if it is, it should have the same orbital period as the Moon itself.

Calvin

Option 1 is the Scientific Method.

Option 2 is the Theology

Option 4 is I believe the Spinoza hypothesis. Spinoza was an Italian philosopher, (i am paraphrasing this) who equated God to a watchmaker. The watchmaker only needs to make the watch once, and although you, as the wearer of the watch, might never have met, seen, or known the watchmaker, the watchmaker exists by the evidence of the watch.

Interestingly, cultural evidence is always being adapted to explain God. Spinoza, who lived during the mechanical age, explained and philosophized God using cultural objects. And perhaps farther back in time, mythology and oral history was used extensively to explain God (I have the Babylonian and sumerian creation mythology, gilgamesh, the Hebrew oral mythologies, etc, in mind). And perhaps today, there's quite a bit of scientific and psuedo scientific thought being incorporated into the "language" of explaining God.

As for Option 3: I think you'll find there is a very wide and varied number of philosophies all bound up here.

Calvin

Ok, lets remove the supreme being bit from the argument temporarily.

Do you agree that evolution is capable of being directed? (The manipulations should have a definite goal in mind).

Exhibit A: Geneticists and genetic engineering, monsanto, etc.

Exhibit B: Sexual reproduction, breeding, etc.

Do you agree there are mechanisms of evolution that is very suspicious?

Exhibit A: cosmic ray "point" mutations

Exhibit B: evolution as noted in the archeological record is not a continuous bit-by-bit change, as darwinists would say. Evolution generally occurs in big leaps and bounds all at once.

Exhibit C: cross over points are controlled by whom? When two different strands of Dna meet, and they decide to cross over, who determines the points and places, when and where code crosses over?

Exhibit D: bacteria has the ability to discover novelty, and isolate the code for it, and wrap it up, and transmit that to other bacteria. (for example, if tuberculosis discovers a genetic immunity to a drug, it will wrap it up and transmit it to other bacteria, in a sense, invoking the process of evolution from within, to without).

Exhibit E: Recent discoveries show that higher order organisms, plants, animals, humans, are capable of cross-individual genetic manipulation. (wow, what a shocker?) This is akin to somebody being born with immunity to AIDS, then passing that immunity onto other people by breathing on them. But yet, this does not happen all the time, or awful things would occur... yet, who, or what decides when an evolutionary change should be evoked across the whole species?

So interestingly enough, dna has the capability to 1) modify its own code 2) store a history of what its been doing for the past millions of years 3) can wake up, transmit messages to other members of its species, and other species to invoke subtle and non-subtle changes 4) is susceptible to apparantly "random" changes and can gather novelty via other methods such as sexual reproduction. Not all of the above is really understood.

I remember when I was in college, I studied genetic "algorithms" via computer simulations. It is possible for example, to put random nonsense code into a computer, and after a number of generations, have it duplicate complex algorithms such as quicksort, path finders, orbital mechanics type algorithms, fluid dynamics algorithms, etc. All on its own, without human intervention at all. It's as if some kind of "creation" is occuring sprouting literally out of nowhere.

Anyway, so let's roll back the concept of God back into this. Note: I am not talking about creationism, the evolutionary record or the judeochristian text. If there is anything at all we discovered from science, it's that the Universe as we know it is very mathematically consistent, and is not a universe of magic and fantasy. That said, God, if such a thing exists, is a mathematically consistent being. As such, that opens up a great many avenues of manipulation and direction (e.g. what is "randomness" and if God is in control of "randomness" to what extent does that lend itself towards direction of evolution?).

Anyway, I'm not saying God created the earth 6000 years ago. However, at the same time, there is neither the thisness or thatness that you seem to imply.

My premise is that since all that we know and experience and create is done through a kind of "genetic lens" -- so ubiquitously that if people were computers on a network, it's the code that writes the code for everything -- that you *have* to point your eye at this code. We currently don't actually know if God is involved, or not. And I know you're not saying that evolutionary direction/manipulation is not happening. But to say it's self-defeating to theorize a control entity is just as well as pointing to a text that says the world was created 6000 years ago and accepting it as such. Maybe it is or isn't? Who knows.

Calvin