关于上帝存在与否的思考

 

先绕个圈，说说一个最近美国颇流行的书，叫《the secret》. 其中主题是“吸引守则”：你一直想什么，什么就一定会实现。这是个一眼就能看穿的“旧酒换新坛”的游戏，这旧酒就是“人有多大胆，地有多大产”，“积极进取的思考”； 巧妙的是它的市场营销策略：加上了“宇宙，能量，守则”，好像真有着一个“吸引守则”的物理定理一样，非常适合物理知识一通半解的广大群众。其中的难点在于，如何反驳对于这个“守则”的怀疑？

 

这里，开始了市场营销高手的巧妙思辨（警告：如果你看了下面的一段话感到头昏，请跳过此段）。此“守则”实现，必须是你的所有思考完全相信此守则；如果你不信，你的大脑的“磁场"就停止作用，你想要得东西：财富，成功也就不会来了。换句话说，信者成立（因为如果你至死都一直相信，也就不用证明什么），不信者不成立（如果你停止了相信，守则即使仍然发生作用，你也不会看到你想证实的结果）。

 

一样的道理：我即使不能证明上帝存在，但你能证明上帝不存在吗？（先别头晕）既然你我都无法证明，上帝是存在或不存在，那么，如果你相信，他就存在；不信，即使他存在，我也无法向你证明。

 

同样的用法其实比比皆是，除了宗教，比如安利 — 如果你一直坚持做下去，也许有一天你会像安利里描述的那末成功；如果你不信，当然不会有那种描述的情况出现。

 

所以，从市场营销，推广的角度，通过此法，可以有效的找到目标市场：那些会易相信的群体，而排斥易怀疑的群体（比如你我）。

 

与其问上帝是否存在，不如问“相信上帝存在是否有用？”。换句话说，只有有用和没用的“真理”的区别，没有绝对真实的“真理”。

 

Limits of human brain

Have you ever wonder that your mind might not tell you the reality? Or, your brain only tells you what is convenient and useful, not what is real?

Let me start by giving couple of examples: When you grasp a rock in you hand, what could your brain tells you about the rock? It will tell you that, the rock is solid with no doubt.  When you see the Sun raises in the morning and goes down in the afternoon, what will your mind tells you “intuitively”? – The Sun circles around the Earth! Also, after decades of research, why it is still so hard for human being to understand Quantum theory and theory of relativity?

Yes, our brain choose information that “seems” convenience and useful for our existence, by not showing us the reality. Over million years of evolution, our brain was evolved to make sure we can fit into the environment we lived in. So that, knowing the rock is solid is a useful information for our ancestor to use to rock as a weapon against other large animals, but knowing the rock is consists of billions of atoms with 99.9% empty space and nucleus will not be immediately useful; knowing Sun circles the earth help us farming agriculture products, which help us avoiding hunger.

Further more, we use ourselves as the scale to measure reality around us: We understand seconds, days, years, and maybe thousand years, but when the scale is far beyond our living environment, such as billion years, or travel in light speed, our brain loses it’s ability to conceptually understand.

To illustrate that our brains always use provide us with “useful and convenient” but not “real” information, let me demonstrate the limits of our brain in these areas:

We use to look for patterns, especially patterns we already know. Do you ever wonder why we see faces, from clouds, rocks on the moon, mars? Because as social animal, a large part of our brain is wired to just recognize faces than anything else!!  More over, even in our modern academic research area, studies are full of patterns searching: what are the merits of most success business individuals and companies? Unfortunately, most of time, these research failed to understand that, same merits and characters exist in individuals or companies who failed too.

We prefer stories to statistics. I don’t think I need to give any examples on we as human being related to stories much better that statistics, or boring numbers. We loved stories, especially stories that we had experienced, or we can relate to: somewhere in our brain, the connections of the memory and stories excited us.

We seek to confirm, not to question, our idea. Just to give a quick example, stock market investors always quote the news that are in favor of their current proposition, and ignore bad news. We selectively process information with bias, based on our experience, our “comfort zone” and our emotion.

We rarely appreciate the role of chance and coincidence in shaping events. Our mind can hardly process possibilities well, even with well trained statistician. 

As we can see, our human beings had broken through those limits, by extending our measurement ability using tools such as microscope and by constantly challenging those limits. Conscious knowing the “boundary” and “biological purpose” of our brains, it will only help us think further beyond these limits.