First a preface
I have to say that recieving this voicemail a couple of days ago was a nice coincidence to an event that occured earlier that same day:
I walked Carol Meredith home from her work at ABC, and as we were walking down 9th Ave, we ran into Jasmin Rosenberg, whom I met last week at Rizzoli Bookstore on 57th St. for her book signing (I was invited by someone in the Illyissimo company). That was coincidence number one.
Carol and I continued back home, and when we were outside our mutual buildings, we stood around for a while discussing business, and when I said goodbye to her I was flagged down by a guy who said "are you Robert Taylor...from YouTube?", a smile came accross my face, "why yes I am". That evening we spent more than two hours having dinner and discussing all sorts of subjects. Brugman was a real genuine article, and I can tell we're going to be friends indefinetly.
During our conversation, the subject of spirituality briefly came up, and I defined my current form of atheism, how my beliefs had evolved (for the better I think), and stating clearly that they are still subject to change at my discretion. When I finally came home, I had a voicemail waiting in my Gmail inbox from a certain Robert who at some point or another had watched my videos, and wanted to know specifically what the current state of beliefs on god were.
Here's the audio from the voicemail I recieved: http://chirb.it/Enx2qJ
For you older folks-- if you can seperate yourself from criticism of my perception of time for a second-- I'd like to explain how my beliefs have changed, and how I feel I've come far in my personal growth.
Some of my first videos on YouTube back in 2006 involved the subject of atheism. The topic was hot, Richard Dawkins was becoming an international phenomenon, and the discussion and release of some of my deepest reflections on beliefs about the "greatest" concepts man thinks about were completely liberating. So much so, that I took my username on YouTube from a play on a word first put forth by Richard Dawkins: relusion. I became and openly declared myself an Anti-Relusionist and so I joined in on the hottest discussion on YouTube...Atheism.
My videos are still smart. They take a lot from Dawkins and other writers and focus almost exclusively on using science, or more specifically, empirical science to refute the concept of an omnipotent being through logic. In and of themselves, the arguments are quite powerful, and solidly grounded. The exploration was a great practice, and the discussion only helped exercise my researching abilities, and search for flaws in a concept that I had dismissed very early on in my life.
However, recently and in particular thanks to the economic bubble bursting in this country, my inclination for autodidacticism has lead me to discover philosophers of a silenced kind, who come entrusted with new concepts from the fringe of philosophical literature. Their arguments are simple and logical, but the thinking can be abstract to the untrained mind. I'm talking about guys like Murray Rothbard and Ludwig von Mises. Their introduction to praxeology has rapidly changed my entire form of approaching a multitude of subjects.
Specifically what has changed is my tackling of the concept of perfection, which an omnipotent being would have to be by definition. Perfection as it relates to life and existence--in my conclusion and thanks to the philosophers I have been reading--is incompatible with life. If we presuppose that change can only alter a perfect being from its perfection, then action in and of itself demonstrates non-perfection. The same denyability can be applied to death, because in death a being cannot be happy or sad (both subjective terms, of course). A omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient being who can resolve their own unhappiness instantly and with absolute perfection has no reason to do...anything. Life, or specifically human life only exists because of the constent unrest and necessity to perpetuate. A perfect being can't experience any of that.
The counter arguments are always simplistic--they have to be. There will be claims that god is not bound by our logic or concept of time... and to go back to the initial question, what has changed in my thought process has been the acceptance of those claims, with a more humanistic response: I think Rothbard put it best, "there's nothing to suggest that logic is the final stage in the evolution of human cognition". Nevertheless, the only thing we have to work with is defining and understanding our limitations.
I've covered these concepts before. The difference is in the dropping of the complex responses. It is not necessary. I always thought that as I matured, the arguments would grow in complexity, at least in their implications. But even in 3 measely years, my understanding has been to accept the intuitive. Yes, that's right, I'm talking about the a priori sciences that are such a crutch in the arguments of even the biggest atheists like Dawkins. It may be too much to go into, because it's a much more interesting discussion, but understanding how much man relies on suppositions to explain all sorts of aspects of reality is truly fascinating, and I think it frightened me because of the notions that science will probably NEVER explain why they work and where they come from. It all relies on our guided and educated reasoning. That's what makes us human, that is our nature.
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