Ain't Nothing But A Vibe Thang

A Christian woman named Brandy Anderson loses her grandmother in 2015. Shortly after, a smart TV in a relative’s home begins behaving strangely, turning itself on, navigating to the menu and typing words of love. The typist identifies itself as the woman’s grandmother, and appears to know things only she would know, and also can read the thoughts of those present. These sessions continue to this day. Also, there’s video.

The scientific mind will naturally go, “Obviously somebody’s fucking with these people.”

The Anderson family thought the same thing; they did everything they could think of to explain this phenomenon. Only after all of their hypotheses fail did they reluctantly reach the conclusion that it really was their grandmother. Further, the information given to the family contradicted their strongly-held many aspects of their strongly-held Christian beliefs. You can listen to her story here.

What do we do with a story like that?

How do we place it into any kind of context that makes “sense” in the materialist world? Science is both the best and worst way to answer this question. It’s a system whose primary stance is doubt; in my opinion “doubt” is the best possible foundation for a belief system; any belief system that doesn’t allow for the strong possibility of error, to me, cannot be correct. The most believable belief system is one that says to its adherents: “This is what we believe, but there’s a pretty good chance we’re full of shit.”

That’s science.

Where science fails, though, is when lived experiences fall outside of the confines of the scientific method: a saintly vision, for example, can’t be measured, weighed, or recreated in a laboratory setting. Hence, scientists dismiss the anomalous, even though “anomalous” experiences are anything but – one study from 2015 found that somewhere between 30-50% of respondents had experienced at least one.

It’s me! Maw-maw!

The much-missed writer Ray Bradbury, in an interview with the much-missed writer Isaac Asimov, described religion and science as “two halves of the same coin,” equating scientific theory with myth, and coming to the conclusion that “where the mystery begins, theology takes over.”

So why is so much effort expended by so many to “disprove” faith? There’s a particular kind of popular debate format I see all the time on YouTube, in which atheists debate the faithful. Such debates must have existed since the first time somebody pointed to the stars and said, “God,” but they found full flower upon the arrival of the “New Atheist” movement, which emerged in the early 2000’s when a loose coalition of scientists and philosophers began a strident attack on religion, blaming it for all manner of human atrocities.

Generally, the debates goes something like this:

Religious person: “I have found a belief system that guides me, comforts me, and informs my daily interactions with people.”

Atheist: “Yeah, but it’s wrong.”

This continues for about two hours or so, at the end of which nobody has convinced anybody of anything.

It’s a great time.

I’m no expert on religion, rhetoric, logic, the Bible, philosophy, or, really, anything more mentally strenuous than intermediate-level Sudoku, but even I recognize the futility of attempting to argue belief. Moreover, why would you do so? Moreover moreover, why does anybody feel the need to defend their faith?

What does it gain anybody to “debunk” the parting of the Red Sea, for example, or the Buddha gaining enlightenment under the Bodhi tree? I suppose the answer is that if one can dismantle literal interpretations of often ephemeral, metaphoric, or poetic events, one can begin the process of ushering those poor blinkered souls into the light of Truth and prevent all of the aforementioned atrocities.

Or something.

The problem with Truth, as I said earlier, is nobody knows shit about shit. Not really. We don’t understand gravity. We don’t understand consciousness. We don’t understand why anything should exist instead of nothing. And we certainly don’t understand a Smart TV that turns itself off on to gossip with the fam.

As I said, science does a good job playing whack-a-mole with the world’s mysteries, but in doing so, it inevitably - and happily - creates more. Oh, you thought you had the universe figured out? Guess what, Chachi, we don’t know what 95% of it is even made out of.

At the same time, no religion of which I’m aware offers a cogent narrative for the reality I experience. It would be nice to place my faith into a container, but I don’t think reality is as easily packaged as a readymade dinner. Instead – and I apologize if I’m approaching Marianne Williamson territory – I think maybe mystery might be reality. In other words, perception and reality may co-exist in some kind of symbiotic, self-birthing system. Reality creates us, and, in turn, we create reality.

Does that make sense? Of course not, which is partly why I believe it. At heart, I wonder if reality isn’t something that can be laid out in pieces like an Ikea futon. I wonder if, instead, the fundamental nature of reality is paradox? Hell, we already know it is. Materialism itself proved it: when you drill down into matter far enough, what you end up with is nothing but vibes. Literal vibes. In that way, materialism disproved material. Which is awesome. All of it is awesome.