Some thoughts on what we are

"Our brains are ethical by design."

A while back, I read a book titled "Why We Believe in God(s) -- A Concise Guide to the Science of Faith." It was written by J. Anderson Thomson, Jr., MD with Clair Aukofer.

In my opinion, the book is brilliant, and explains a lot of things to me that never seemed to make sense before. It's all about how we humans have evolved, specifically our brains and body chemistry, to produce the kinds of behaviour we exhibit as modern homo sapiens. Obviously, from the title, most of the focus of the book is on how our brains and body chemistry function to make most of us susceptible to belief in higher beings for which no tangible proof exists.

This post isn't about atheism though. This post is about, well, about biology, I guess. What makes people people. How our brains work and why we are the way we are.

Anderson and Aukover's book has made me more convinced than ever that human beings are no more special or unique than, let's say, ants. Certainly we're far more complex. But we really are nothing more than bags of meat and chemicals that are programmed to react to the outside world (and the inner world too) in predictable ways.

I'm completely comfortable with this concept. I suppose being the hard-core atheist that I am makes me more predisposed than most to be able to accept that people are no more special biologically than ants or any other living thing. Evolution has given us abilities that set us apart from other creatures, but our ability to empathize with a fellow human being, or believe in gods, or write poetry stems from the same place as the evolved ability of birds to fly in flocks and never bump into each other or to find their way from their nesting grounds to a winter feeding ground and back again.

However, when I presented this concept to a group of writers I interact with regularly online...a very intelligent and open-minded group of people if there ever was one... some of the people who responded were outright offended by the idea and even those who weren't offended refused to accept that humans don't have some special "something other" that no other creature on the planet has. Even those who are also atheists wouldn't accept it. That blew me away. How can you call yourself an atheist and still sit there and insist that humans have "something special" that makes them somehow "more" than every other biological creature on the planet?

They almost seemed to think it was disrespectful of me to suggest it. Disrespectful to who?? To god, I guess, if they believe in one, or to humankind, if they don't.  Even the atheists were so protective of their precious status as the dominant species on the planet that they couldn't, or wouldn't, entertain the idea that we'd got where we are by simple chance and evolution.

I guess that blew me away as much as the concept that most of the people on the planet believe with all their hearts that there's some imaginary sky-god out there looking down on them, hearing their every thought and caring whether they eat a mollusk, say "goddam", or make love with someone of their own sex. To believe that humans are somehow more than collections of cells, chemicals, meat and bones, you cannot, in my opinion, truly consider yourself an atheist.

Excerpts from the book
Here are some of my favourite passages, that I'd highlighted in the book (don't worry, I didn't deface a book, though I'm not averse to highlighting favourite passages in printed tomes. This particular book was an e-book I bought through Kobo:

"Your snap judgements are millions of years in the making."

"Religious beliefs are basic human social survival concepts with slight alterations."

"Just to believe in a god, our mind bounces off no fewer than twenty hard-wired adaptations evolved over eons of natural selection to help us coexist and communicate with our fellow homo sapiens to survive and dominate the planet."

"Severe climate variation between 70,000 and 100,000 years ago apparently reduced our population to perhaps as few as 600 breeding individuals. That is what modern genetics now tells us. That means that every one of the 7 billion people on this planet is a descendant of that small group of hunter-gatherers who lived in Africa and survived the harsh climate change."

"The fact is, we never lose the longing for a caretaker." (This is in reference to the strong need of most people to feel someone is watching over them, even once they become adults.)

"It begins with our ability to mentally separate their [other peoples'] minds from their bodies, which in turn circles back to our ability not only to believe in what we cannot see, but also to interact with the invisible. We are born with the ability to read what others may be thinking even when they are not there to tell us. In a way, all of those to whom we are attached sometimes become imaginary friends."

"Belief in the supernatural is not something learned from our culture as we grow from infants to toddlers and more cognizant children. It is original equipment, requiring no social prompting."

"This human ability for self-deception is crucial to religious belief. If many believers could see their own minds more clearly, they would see that self-deception plays a role in their acceptance of faith."

"Most people live their lives as if there is no god. We stop at red lights, we put our children in car seats, and we act responsibly to protect our safety and the safety of those we love. If a person is religious, he is an atheist in relation to others' gods and the gods of history. He also will almost invariably live as an atheist in relation to his own worshipped deity." (In other words, we tend to behave as if there was no god protecting us even when we do believe...ie: we stop at red lights, not trusting that a god will save us if we go through.)

"We in the west have become so used to religious people not really, truly and fully believing what they say they believe, that we are startled when, as on 9/11, we encounter people who really do believe their religion and put their beliefs into murderous practice."

"At heart, we are all born creationists. Disbelief requires effort."

"The less you abide by scripture and the more you use your basic moral intuitions, the more moral you are likely to be. Genuine morality is doing what is right, regardless of what we may be told; religious morality is doing what we are told."

"We evolved to favour those with our genes over those without. Religions evoke and exploit kin emotions."

"Most religions are preoccupied with sex, and that in itself offers strong evidence that religion is man-made."

"The sacred is found between the ears." (Danish neurobiologist, Lone Frank)

"It has been documented for years that many individuals with temporal lobe epilepsy, which comes from electrical disturbances in the temporal lobes, have intense religious experiences, and that extreme religiosity is a common character trait among such patients." (he goes on the cite the following examples of people who are thought to have had temporal lobe epilepsy: St. Paul was having an epileptic fit when he was "struck down" on the road to Damascus; others: Ste. Theresa of Avila, Feodor Dostoevsky and Marcel Proust.)

"We often hear that if it weren't for religion, we would be immoral and unethical. Mirror neurons resoundingly refute this." (mirror neurons, put simply, are responsible for humans' ability to feel empathy. You'll have to read the book to get it.)

"God, No" ...a book review

I've been reading Penn Jillette's new book, "God, No," and I'm loving it so much I just had to put it out there.

You'll know Penn Jillette as the big guy in the Penn & Teller magic duo. Penn is what he calls a "hard-core atheist." I'm stealing that one to describe myself too. His book is about being an atheist, so if that offends you, just don't read it. Or, maybe you should read it if atheism offends you, because you really need to get over that.

If you've ever seen Jillette rant on any of his videos (many of which can be found on YouTube), you'll know what I mean when I say he writes like he talks. His book is liberally sprinkled with the f-word and with a veritable feast of hilarious, pointed, brilliant metaphors, similes and descriptions. He meanders around his topic like an avid needleworker browsing the world's biggest needle crafts store, idly wandering from one story to the next, picking up a thread here and a thimble there, not always with any obvious connection, until coming back finally to his point. And all along the way you've been treated to a delightful, deliciously scandalous, funny ride with a point at the end.

The book is divided up into sections named after the ten commandments. In place of the real ten commandments, he offers his own versions, which I like very much. For instance, instead of "Remember the sabbath day to keep it holy" and so on, Jillette's fourth commandment is:

"Put aside some time to rest and think (if you're religious, that might be the Sabbath; if you're a Vegas magician, that'll be the day with the lowest grosses)."

I like that.

If for no other reason than an appreciation of good humour, I recommend this book. I frequently laugh out loud while I read it. I shit you not. It constantly makes me wish I could write like that. It's funny, it's fun to read, and it has a lot of good points. But not only is it funny, it's often very touching too... as I found with his story about the orthodox Jew-turned-atheist who approached him after a show asking him to participate in a very special moment in his life. I actually found myself dabbing tears from my eyes as I read that story.

Great book. Read it.

The urge to change

Why, I ask you, is it so necessary for TV and movie makers to make radical changes to the plots and characters of so many books they transform to their own medium?

I have two recent examples to illustrate this: The Vampire Diaries and FlashForward. I'll cover FlashForward first, because I've finished the book and am all caught up with the series.

The only similarities between FlashForward, the book by Robert J. Sawyer, and FlashForward the television series, are the facts that they both revolve around the aftermath of a global blackout (physical unconsciousness, not an electrical blackout) caused by some kind of physics experiment, and they both share several main characters -- in name, at least, if not in the role they play in the story. Also in both, the experiment is amplified by an outside force, though this force is different between the book and the show.

And that's it. The plots differ wildly. The characters, of necessity, do also. In the book the main characters are the physicists who conducted the experiment, and the plot follows their investigation into what went so crazy and caused the blackout. In the TV show, the main characters are FBI agents trying to find out who caused the blackout and whether it will happen again. There are so many critical differences between the plots that it's not even worth going into.

So now to The Vampire Diaries. Admittedly, I just started reading this, but already some key elements are wildly different. First thing I noted was the rather unsettling realization that the physical appearance of Elena Gilbert, the female protagonist, is wildly different from book to TV show. In the book, she's a stunningly beautiful and popular blonde with eyes the colour of lapis lazuli. In the TV show, she's pretty, but not remarkably so, she's a brunette, and while she has a close circle of friends, she's not universally popular. Normally a character's appearance change wouldn't trouble me...it's not usually that important to the plot. But the writer mentions the blonde/blue-eyed thing several times in just the first few chapters, and I sense it may be significant...the character Stefan wears a lapis ring, for instance. The other, even bigger difference between the book and TV show is the very significant fact that the brother vampires are five hundred years old in the book, rather than the hundred and fifty some-odd that they are in the show. In the book, they lived during the Renaissance. In the TV show, they lived around the time of the civil war or so. That would have a major impact on the scope of the story.

So, back to my question: why do the TV and movie people make these vast changes to an author's work? Is it vanity? Do they like the main premise of a story, but want to put their own twist on it so it will belong to them? Is it technical? Maybe it's much more difficult to film certain things, so the plot changes to accommodate physical and budgetary restrictions. Is it cultural? In FlashForward the book, the main action takes place almost entirely in Europe. North American television viewers wouldn't like that (or, at least, that's what most North American television producers think). I suppose it could be any one of these, or a combination, or some other reason I haven't thought of.

Whatever the reason, I find it rather annoying and disturbing. I think of the writers who spent so much energy and devotion in the writing of their books. It must be marvelously exciting and rewarding to have someone offer you a bunch of money to turn your story into a television show or a movie or a stage play. But then to see whoever bought the rights to your story trashing it by throwing away almost every significant detail and replacing them with what I call Hollywood Pap...that must be heartbreaking!

I follow Robert J. Sawyer on Twitter. Now and then he comments on FlashForward the TV show, and he seems pleased and excited about the whole thing. I don't think I've ever seen him say anything negative about the plot changes and having his book basically hijacked and replaced by a silly Hollywood templated cutout that almost completely disregards the original storyline. I may just bring this blog post to his attention to see if he might have some comments about that...though I have no illusions that he'll express unhappiness about it, even if that's what he feels. He's a professional, after all. It's just business.

Right?